


as heads is tails (cause i'm in need of some restraint)

by convexity



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Body Modification, Credence POV, Credence/Graves past mention, Dubious Consent, Food Issues, Food Restriction, Grindelwald winning Credence over, Grooming, Hickeys, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Manipulative Gellert Grindelwald, Mary-Lou Mentioned, Misplaced Trust, Not Original Percival Graves, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Post-Orgasm Torture, Religious Guilt, Spanking, Violence, Wandless Magic, vinda rosier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-05-16 08:22:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14807754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convexity/pseuds/convexity
Summary: Grindelwald managed to escape New York with Credence, who knows he impersonated Graves- and not much else. He takes him somewhere to recuperate.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> just for fun- super manipulative grindelwald grooming credence for his cause. works best if there was another catalyst for the final obscurus outburst- where the squib/slap scene didn't happen lol. as mentioned in the tags no original percival graves

     Mr Graves had saved him from his fate. That much he knew. That much he remembered. What exactly his fate was going to be at the hands of New York’s finest Aurors- that had been unclear. Trying to remember exactly what happened in the tunnel was like trying to remember a dream after waking, everything viewed from far away, through a lens that whirled and roared like a tornado. He’d been afraid of them, of the thing inside him, of himself.

Graves, or rather, Not-Graves- had managed through a frightening display of magical skill and cunning to get them both out, relatively unscathed. Luckily for both of them, Credence’s energy was sapped. He felt drained to exhaustion, ready to follow the devil into the mouth of hell if it meant he could just rest.

He didn’t know where the man had taken him (he’d lost consciousness long before they arrived). He only knew that hands that felt like Mr Grave’s but were not lifted him as effortlessly as if he was made of cotton and straw. He was carried to a bed and set down gently. He marveled drowsily at the feeling of cool soft fabric underneath him and at his cheek. Downy covers were pulled up to hug his shoulders. The hand that felt like Grave’s rested in his hair for a moment, and then was gone. He welcomed the abyss that yawned to swallow him up, the pull of unconsciousness sweet as cool water.  
  
When he woke, he was alone in a bed twice the size of his bed at the church. Consciousness came to him slowly, first with the awareness of his own limbs. He flexed them experimentally on the sheets and whimpered in pain- every muscle was more sore than he thought possible. It hurt to breathe. When he opened his eyes, it was to a grey room, largely unfurnished except for the bed and a small dresser with a mirror, cloudy and tarnished as if it had been lost at the bottom of the sea.

Driving sheets of rain pelted the window, and a gust of wind howled against the north side of the house, rattling the pane in it’s wooden frame. Credence swung his legs over the side of the bed and lost his breath at how tender everything felt, like ma had taken the belt to his whole body. Not that she could, anymore. She couldn’t do anything.  
He steeled himself and stood. Barefoot on creaking floorboards, he went gingerly to the cloudy mirror. His eyes looked wild, ringed with dark circles. But he still felt himself, mostly, behind them. He turned away. Sea-green paint peeled from the door and littered the floor, the skeleton keyhole beginning to rust. He turned the knob and found the door unlocked. He didn’t know if he’d expected it to be.

The hall was silent. He tread carefully, leaving footprints in the dust. He peered around the corner before entering the next room. A quiet kitchen, dusty and dark. A small window over the sink looked out to a weed-choked garden, the dark afternoon distorted by rivulets of rain. He began to wonder if he was alone. If he’d been left here. He remembered being put in bed by Mr Graves- _no,_ not him, someone else. The man who had emerged when the mask had melted, when they had fled. This man had eyes like chips of ice. _Grindelwald,_ he’d said. His voice was changed too. It had all the same inflections as Grave’s, but now it belonged to a different man entirely. Was he gone?

 He wandered from the kitchen to the next room, equally dark but for the glow of an oil lamp next to an armchair. Though turned away from him facing a cold hearth, he knew the chair was occupied by the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood, an instinctual alarm running down his spine. What was the saying? _Rabbit ran over your grave._

“Come here, Credence.” Came Not-Grave’s voice. The quiet authority of the words gave him a creeping sense of deja-vu. Against his better judgement, he obeyed. He rounded the broad-backed old armchair, giving it a wide berth. The man sitting there was reading from a thick leather-bound volume, but he closed it and set it to the side next to the oil lamp.

Credence found himself staring at his feet. The man- Grindelwald- didn’t address him. A long moment passed. He was patient, Credence realized. Waiting him out. Finally, Credence’s nerves got the best of him. He looked up.

Grindelwald was strikingly different from Mr Graves. Somewhere in his early forties, perhaps, with white-blond hair cut fashionably close at the temples like Grave’s had been. This man was taller and a little narrower through the chest. His clothes were of good quality, making Credence feel nearly naked in his bare feet and loose white undershirt. He had grey eyes that pierced him like fish-hooks, made him want to squirm. 

Grindelwald stood to his full height, smoothing his waistcoat and keeping his eyes trained on Credence, who’d begun to cower against his will. An involuntary shake in the hands crept in, followed by a tightness in the shoulders. His head turned to the side as if he could just look away and avoid whatever came next. He felt fear like cold water rising around him, tried to tamp it down. At least the _thing_  inside him lay dormant and cold, had no interest in his fear- only his rage. 

This was not Mr Graves. This was a man who had impersonated another- for weeks. Months? To what end, Credence did not know. He did not know what kind of danger he was in, even where he was. All he knew was that this man had wanted desperately to find the child, find _him,_ and now they were quite alone.

He wondered vaguely if he could run, or fight with enough scrap to get away. _No,_ he thought, with a growing sense of dread. _I don’t think so_.

“In a way,” Grindelwald spoke, “ it feels as if we are meeting for the first time. And that each time before this was but a dream.”

Credence bade himself stay still though his heart beat wildly in his chest.

“You look much better, Credence.” Grindelwald said warmly. He came into Credence’s space, slipped a hand alongside his cheek, rested it there gently. Credence’s hands still trembled, but he felt his traitorous body respond to the calm voice, the touch. A familiar, heady scent surprised him. He inhaled again to try to catch it. This man _smelled_ the same as Graves, he realized. Probably used the same aftershave, or a cologne- he didn't know. But it was unmistakably _Graves._ His mind provided a deluge of sensory memories- kind brown eyes and hair gone grey at the temples- causing wonder and comfort and _want_  to come rushing back to the foreground of his mind. 

“Your fever broke in the night. Did you sleep well?”

Credence twitched in the affirmative.

“I admit I had a hand in that. A potion works best, but as with most things, there are other ways.”

Overwhelmed by their proximity, Credence closed his eyes. This man was caressing him like Graves used to, continuing the dirty trick he’d been playing all along.

“Forgive me.” Grindelwald said, as if listening to Credence’s private thoughts. “I wish I had known it was you and saved us both some trouble. And you some pain. I would take it back, if I could. Take you away from there.”

Credence shifted his weight, unsure of how to answer. _Who are you? What do you want?_

“Are you in any pain?” Grindelwald asked.

He shrugged, bewildered at the soft attention. A finger lifted his chin, forcing him to meet Grindelwald’s glacial eyes.

“I brought you somewhere we wouldn’t be bothered, so I could look after you until you’re well.”

Credence tried to place the man’s accent with the dozens he’d heard in shifting crowds. He wondered if he was somewhere in northern Europe now, or simply in upstate New York, a cottage at the end of some dirt lane. His head was foggy, and his limbs ached. Why was Grindelwald- who from what Credence had seen in the tunnel was a very powerful wizard- being kind to him? If it had all been a ruse, why was he talking about looking after him?

“Now tell me, what hurts?”

“Everything.” Credence admitted quietly. Grindelwald clicked his tongue sympathetically, guided Credence back to the room he’d woken up in with a hand on the small of his back. Grindelwald closed the door behind them, gestured for Credence to get back in the bed.

He climbed in, muscles protesting with every movement of his limbs. Even his ribs hurt. He wondered if he pulled up his shirt if they would be bruised. He sank back against the pillows and felt the bed dip as Grindelwald sat on the edge.

His hands went to Credence’s shoulders, but didn’t touch. They hovered right above them, steady as a surgeon’s. Credence felt pain there start to ebb, replaced by a sensation of physical pleasure, like stretching first thing in the morning or sinking into hot bathwater.

Grindelwald’s hands moved down his torso and over his sore ribs, over his hips and thighs, all the way to his bare feet. Credence remembered his split open and abused palm, that day in the alley. Graves had moved his fingers just like that over it, hovering, and it had been whole again. Tears stung his eyes.

“Why are you crying?” Grindelwald asked. There was no malice in his voice, only curiosity.

Credence shook his head, swallowed against the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know.”

Wind battered the window, trying to get in. The rain hadn’t let up, and it was dark as dusk. He felt tired again, a bone-deep sleepiness that the healing had left him with, a blissed out pleasure glowing inside him. He was grateful for it, even if it wasn’t enough to keep the tears at bay.

“Well,” Grindelwald stroked Credence’s hair, let the backs of his long fingers brush his wet cheek with a tenderness that made Credence’s lip begin to quiver. “You’re safe now, Credence. I won’t let anyone harm you.”

He _believed_ this man, he realized, even if he didn’t understand why. It was impossible not to. He felt like a magnet, like the bugs that threw themselves at the electric street lamps, transfixed. He wondered if it was because his magic was in him, healing all his torn muscle fibers and bruised ribs, or if it was something else entirely. He sighed shakily.

“I’ve got you,” Grindelwald cooed, “I’ll take very good care of you.”

“Why?” Credence managed, brows knitting. Still he stroked Credence’s dark hair.

“Because…” Grindelwald said simply, “You have such powerful magic in you, child. And those Aurors were going to kill you. I simply couldn’t have it.”

Credence remembered how close it had all come- how inevitable it had felt.  “There was a man... he said we wanted to help me. And the woman he was with...she said...” Credence struggled to remember through the haze, but Grindelwald interrupted him.

“None of them wanted anything but to kill you. They would have promised mercy only to deliver you to MACUSA for the _coup de grâce_. But I understand, liebchen, that none of it is your fault. I forgive you. They…” Grindelwald shook his head a little sadly. “They never would.”

Credence nodded, guilt squeezing his throat like a vice. He’d suspected as much. Why would they? He was lucky Grindelwald wanted him at all, would tolerate him after what he’d done. But he didn’t want to think about that now, that darkness that shattered glass and bent steel and flung outwards like a storm. The shadow that came to life like a golem and stopped human hearts, tore the earth like soft clay.

“It’s wild, the magic- and frightening- I know. But I can teach you how to control it, Credence.”

Credence’s name sounded different in Grindelwald’s mouth than it had in Grave’s. They were one and the same- he had to remember that….But there was affection in Grindelwald’s tone, each syllable intimate and soft, calling him. When he’d been Graves, there was curtness there instead. _Credence- have you found the child?_ Credence felt the danger of how Grindelwald was calling him now- like sleepwalking toward a very tall cliff. Perhaps when he wasn’t so tired he might try to care.

“But why do you want to teach me?” Credence asked, wishing selfishly Grindelwald would hold him like when he was Graves.

“I know you don’t trust me right now, and I don’t begrudge you that.” He said patiently, stopping Credence with a raised hand when he opened his mouth to protest.  “But you will grow to. In time. And it will all make so much sense to you, my boy.”

Credence heard Grave’s voice. _My boy._

“But for now I want you to rest. Try to sleep a little more for me. When you wake again we can eat.”

 “Yes, sir," Credence breathed.

Grindelwald’s mouth twitched in a smile as he rose to leave. “Good boy.”

“Sir,” Credence said urgently, sitting up gingerly as though the soreness in his ribs might return. Grindelwald turned in the doorway, hummed questioningly.

“The necklace. The one you gave me, I… I don’t have it. I must’ve lost it. I’m sorry.”

Grindelwald only grinned indulgently. Grey eyes remained trained on Credence as he drew a long leather cord from his pocket. The triangular pendant glinted at Credence on the end, spinning delicately. Credence exhaled in wonder and relief. Grindelwald brought it to him, dropped it carefully into Credence’s outstretched hand.

“Same rules apply.” He put his hand in Credence’s hair once again, and Credence closed his eyes, chased the touch despite himself.

He heard the door close with a soft click. He was alone. The wind howled and rattled the windowpane. He pulled his knees up to his chest and held onto the pendant just tightly enough to feel the corner bite his palm. _Touch the symbol and I will know. I will come to you._ Credence closed his eyes and let the rain lull him back into sleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> while abroad Grindelwald explores the nature of his relationship with his pet obscurial.

Credence was a bundle of nerves, like a live wire. He was comprised of little contradictions between his nature and nurture- or lack thereof. If Credence had never been in the hands of some puritanical no-maj, he could have been formidable. But he wouldn't have this hurricane of parasitic magic riding inside him, either. And truth be told, if he wasn’t so chastised and lost and desperate for affection, he wouldn’t be nearly as easy to handle, to mold into something that fit Grindelwald’s designs perfectly. It really could not have been a better fit- a more perfect storm.

“Credence.” Grindelwald called from where he was sitting. Immediately, the boy came to stand by his side. He really was the most obedient thing Grindelwald had ever come across. It wasn’t boring with this slender, doe-eyed thing, either- it was delightful.

“Come,” he said, patting his thigh. Credence lowered his weight onto Grindelwald’s lap, first time apprehension gone. He knew by now just how to settle his weight, what was comfortable, how to fold his feet down by Grindelwald’s, run the bottoms of his stockinged feet over the man’s shoes to feel the hard leather on his sensitive soles- these days finding a thrill in everything.

Grindelwald wrapped an arm around Credence, anchoring him on his lap. “Little pet.” He said into Credence’s ear, waiting for the little bit of tension to leave the boy’s spine. Credence nodded as if to confirm _. Yes. Yours._ Grindelwald smiled to himself.

“You’re learning so fast. Did I tell you that?” Credence gave a humble little shake of the head, almost embarrassed by praise but soaking it up like a sponge all the same. “You’re a miracle, Credence.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, grabbed a handful of the boy’s slender side, kneaded it gently. “Your magic is exquisite. When you concentrate, I can hear it. It’s… almost mournful, and undeniably graceful.” Grindelwald let his praise run to the extravagant. Nothing was too sugar-coated for the fae creature in his lap, housing destruction like a time bomb inside him. “Your magic has a quality like memory.... like a piano, heard playing from another room.”

Credence’s eyes fluttered shut at the honeyed words. He relaxed a fraction, letting more of his torso rest against Grindelwald’s chest. “I want to bring you in my bed again tonight, Credence.”

Credence’s eyes opened. Grindelwald marveled at the dark brightness in them, pupils gone wide. "Hmm?" Grindelwald prompted. 

“Yes, Sir.” Credence breathed.

“That’s alright?” Grindelwald teased, moving his hand down from Credence’s side, wedging his fingers in between the boy’s thighs, squeezing. Credence’s breath hitched. His eyes began to shine like glass.

“M-hm,” He moaned. “I wanna be…” Grindelwald interrupted him by nosing his neck, pressing soft kisses under his ear. “Wanna be good for you...ah.. again…Sir.” Credence managed through shivers that broke out in gooseflesh all over his arms, down his legs. Grindelwald hummed, nipped Credence’s throat and then sucked a mark onto his soft skin bright as a poppy. Credence whimpered, bunching Grindelwald’s shirt in his fist, wrinkling the fabric. He didn’t mind. Credence was so responsive, so utterly submissive and oh so _repressed_. It made debauching him wildly fun.

Credence had begun to understand that pain could be mixed with pleasure. Grindelwald was careful lest he get too carried away and scare the boy, make him tighten up like a spring again, unwilling to even look him in the eyes. It would be all too easy to do, considering the boy’s past, that unyielding new world doctrine, his mother’s beatings. He had already been broken, he didn’t need to be damaged further- only the pieces could be artfully rearranged into something that served Grindelwald’s own purposes.

There would be no sport in hurting him for true, no fun. Grindelwald wanted Credence to _like_ it, wanted only to _play_ at hurting. This was his boy, after all. His latest addition. He would find a perfect balance between utility and entertainment. And, in his experience, it would made Credence love him even more blindly.

So Grindelwald reintroduced Credence to pain in little love bites at first, barely a mark. Then, harder, until blood came to dot the surface of Credence’s skin and bruises like deep shadows were left in the following days. He would touch them gently, ghosting his fingers over the marks he had left and watch Credence’s face color. Gellert discovered when a nipple was pinched tight right before he was brought to climax, he _keened_ and then shuddered prettily.

Now that Credence was curious, he was willing to let Grindelwald do anything to him-told him all the time with his eyes, soft and trusting. He experimented with sucking marks into Credence’s soft inner thighs, only stopped when Credence’s sweet whimpers turned to silent tears, though he found them just as delightful and kissed them from Credence’s cheeks, tasting their salt. He’d reached a hand down and healed the marks, held him very close and told him he was so beautiful, that he loved him and he was home now. Credence was smitten, of course, possibly incapable of bearing him any ill will in the first place. No harm done.

He left Credence in a second story one bedroom flat in Bandol, in the south of France, for three days to conduct business elsewhere. He knew Credence would slow him down if he brought him along, he had a lot of ground to cover and plans to discuss. The boy was stable and obedient enough to be left behind for a while. What he didn’t expect was the enthusiasm with which he was greeted upon return, as if he’d left him tied to the radiator and blindfolded the whole time. He hadn’t- Credence didn’t need that sort of restraint. A command was enough. _Wait for me._

Credence was wearing Gellert’s own shirt, buttons undone at the collar and sliding off one shoulder, too large by far. “Sir,” He breathed, flinging himself into Grindelwald’s arms. Grindelwald recovered quickly from having the air nearly knocked from his lungs. He put his arms around the boy, dropped the parcel he’d been holding to the floor and nudged it to the side with his foot.

“Oh, what’s this, liebchen?” He asked into Credence’s hair.

“I thought you weren’t coming back.” He admitted. Gellert could hear the tears tightening the boy’s throat.

“I told you I’d be gone a few days, child.” He let a hint of chastisement creep into his voice. Credence had an ear for reprimand, looked up at him wetly.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t doubt you. I didn’t… I just…”

Gellert relented, never having truly been irritated in the first place. He found desperation, and even more acutely- tears- very becoming on Credence. “Even if you did, it’s not a _sin_. A little doubt is healthy. It's wise."

Credence looked unconvinced. “ _Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Be not wise in your own eyes; and turn away from evil._” he said in the monotone of recitation.

“ _Wise in your own eyes,_ " Grindelwald repeated. "A byproduct of thinking for yourself. And if thinking for yourself is evil, then every great mind, every great wizard or witch who has ever lived and has dared to see, is evil. Do you think I’m evil, Credence?”

Credence shook his head. “No.” He said simply. Cognitive dissonance sometimes wore him thin like frayed rope. But Gellert liked to watch the boy shrug off old dogma and become a little lighter for it.

Gellert shrugged, locked his hands around the small of Credence’s back to anchor him close. “In your scripture, what did the devil say to God? Why was he cast out?”

Credence licked his lips. “Non serviam.”

“I will..?”

“I will not serve.”

Gellert's mouth twitched in a smile. “Those things your mother taught you- they don’t belong to you. They certainly don’t own you. Don’t forget who you _are,_ Credence. ”

Credence considered the weight of those words. Gellert felt himself losing patience with the direction of their conversation. This brand of no-maj religion was so _glum_. But it was a good metaphor, for what was to come. What he had to teach Credence so he could _see_.

“Now, what’s all this? Tears? You’d think I left you in the coat closet.”

Credence flushed. “I…”

“Come,” Grindelwald put a firm hand on his shoulder and steered Credence toward the flat’s bedroom, window open to the balmy summer air, sunlight dappling the floor through the eyelets in the curtains. 

“If you need something to believe, believe that you are mine, and I'll never leave you. Not for long. Not for true."

Credence _smiled_ at him. It was small, crooked. It was sweet. It was brimming with trust. 

"Now get on your knees. Show me how much you missed me."

Credence knelt.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dubcon ho, yall.

They’d been a month in Dresden. For the last three days it had rained. Heavy cloud cover darkened the city to browns and greys that ran together like the impasto paintings Credence had seen when they were in Paris, crests and ridges he had wanted to run the pads of his fingers over. The streets turned to mud that sucked at their shoes, and Credence wondered how the no-maj’s here kept anything clean at all.

Rain made the cobblestones slick and turned the shingled roofs to the same slate hue as the skies. Credence had slept late that morning, woken alone in the middle of the bed with the linens wrapped around his ankles like netting. He’d made the bed and broken his fast on a hardboiled egg. He ate sitting in the deep recess of the windowsill, feet curled underneath him, watching people getting their clothes soaked on the streets below.

 _Wie eine Katze_ , Grindelwald had said the first time he caught Credence perched there, reading or watching the people below. Credence did not catch his meaning but readily allowed himself to be stroked under the chin with long fingers before Grindelwald turned away with an amused huff.

Grindelwald returned not long after Credence had eaten breakfast. Credence didn’t ask where he’d been or how long he’d been gone, but stood up to take his wet coat for him. Grindelwald went straight to the desk in the corner. He lit the whale oil lamp with a distracted wave of his hand and began to roll out parchment. Credence got on the bed and pulled a book from the bedside table. After a moment he set it back down.

“Sir?”

Grindelwald hummed questioningly without looking up.

“Can I make coffee?”

Grindelwald raised an eyebrow, quill frozen above the inkwell. “For you or for me?”

“Oh. You, Sir. I..I was asking… What I meant to ask is if you’d like some.”

Grindelwald’s smile widened as Credence scrambled to clarify, but he looked back to his parchment, apparently not interested in toying with him further today. “Yes, that’s fine.”

Credence swung his feet over the bed and went to the small kitchen, put the water on and got a paper bag of coffee beans out of the cupboard. Ma hadn’t allowed coffee. Said it was a sin, like alcohol or tobacco. Grindelwald bought fresh coffee every week from a shop down the street, and had showed him how to grind it to a fine powder, how much to put in the bottom of the press, how long to wait for the boiling water to cool before pressing down the lever, gently, slowly. Credence could do it with magic now if he tried, but he liked the routine of the task. He put his nose in the coffee bag sometimes just to inhale. It was as pleasant as the jasmine on the vines of the last flat they’d stayed in, or the scent of the giant pines that had surrounded the old cottage in upstate.

“Credence?” Grindelwald called from the other room and Credence jumped, nearly dropping the bag and spilling coffee beans all over the floor.

“Yes?” He called back.

“Is there cream in the icebox?”

“Yes, Sir.” He poured the cup with shaky hands, kicking himself for how a small thing like hearing his name called from another room could make his hands shake for a half an hour if he was caught off guard. Grindelwald told him he was some kind of miracle, that he had power in him that could raze cities. (Which didn’t sound exactly like a miracle to Credence, but he didn’t say so). Yet he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking as he poured coffee, or keep from waking up sweating in the night from dreams where he turned into vicious black smoke or where the leather crop of a belt was opening his hands up like soft fruit. He knew Grindelwald saw it. Nothing escaped his notice, his eyes like chips of ice. Why did he tolerate Credence still, keep him around, take him from place to place like luggage? He was surely more trouble than he was worth.

He set the coffee cup on a tray, poured a little thick cream from the icebox into a saucer. His hands were steadying a little, with help of a few deep breaths that he held in his chest until it hurt and exhaled slowly, something Grindelwald had taught him when he was learning control. He set the tray down on the desk, safely away from the parchment that now had several paragraphs of neat, clean script on it. He caught himself trying to sneak a glance and looked away quickly.

He didn’t like to think of how Grindelwald might react if he suspected Credence of snooping, or reading anything he hadn’t been invited to see. He’d never raised a hand to him, true, but Credence had enough sense to know it was out of a sideways sort of affection, and not out of the realm of possibility. In fact, Credence had seen a little of what Grindelwald was capable of in New York, and it made him feel cold all the way through, right to his core. He didn’t like to think of that either, if he could help it.

“Ah.” Grindelwald reached for the creamer, poured it in the coffee until it swirled back to the surface. “Thank you, liebling. Looks perfect.”

Credence nodded, biting his lip against the swell of pleasure that came from a job well done, a bit of praise.

“Where’s your cup?”

“I’m fine, Sir. I just thought you might like some after being out this morning.”

Grindelwald regarded him for a moment. His full attention was always just this side of too much, made Credence want to disappear. But if Grindelwald went most of a day without paying him any mind, he felt like he was dying of thirst, or hunger, or some invisible torment. When that happened he was patient. He did not beg or act out. He waited. He was good.

“You want to come here while I write these letters?”

Credence stiffened. “Where, Sir?”

Grindelwald motioned beside the chair. Credence was unsure, but he went to the floor where Grindelwald had indicated and knelt.

“Just sit by me. Good.” He felt Grindelwald’s hand on his hair, gently guiding Credence’s temple to rest on his thigh.

_Oh._

Grindelwald petted him softly and he felt himself becoming something other than strictly himself. His world shrank to the little bit of contact he had with Grindelwald’s thigh, and the scratch of the quill on the parchment from above him, and the patter of rain on the window. He heard the sound of the coffeecup being picked up and set back down distantly, as if in a dream. He would have fallen asleep if his knees had not begun to ache fiercely, and his feet had not begun to feel like pins and needles. He wriggled to try and find some relief.

“Here.” Grindelwald moved back a fraction and spread his legs, patting the chair between them. Credence crawled the short distance and fitted himself between Grindelwald’s thighs, his back resting on the chair. He lay his cheek on the inside of Grindelwald’s knee. Underneath the desk he felt even less himself, in a very lovely, low-frequency sort of way. His eyelids grew heavy-his thoughts sluggish. Grindelwald’s hand went back into his hair, carding through it gently and scratching here and there as he saw fit.

“Credence.”

Credence opened his eyes, having no memory of anything directly preceding the moment. Wisps of black smoke were floating above his shoulders, around him, beginning to take shape. Fear gripped him, cold and immediate.

“Don’t be afraid.” He heard Grindelwald say. He was still in between his knees, under the table. Had he drifted to sleep? Was it midnight, or noon?

“Don’t be afraid, Credence.” Grindelwald repeated, voice low and steady but tinged with something that might have been a cousin to urgency. “You can control it.”

Credence took one of his steadying breaths, slow and big. He’d learned that his own magic was not the same as this, that it ran parallel but on a different wavelength altogether. He only had to tune the dial. The monster, the _thing_ sounded like a freight train coming down a tunnel, an eerie pitch rising to a crescendo. His own magic was soft like water. _Piano playing in another room._ Easily, through his own suggestion, the tendrils of smoke evaporated and he was whole again, solid. He let out a shaky breath. Suddenly feeling claustrophobic, Credence moved out from under the desk.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled as he stood on shaky legs. “Why was...why was that happening?” He felt the sting of tears come unbidden. His heart was racing.

“It’s alright.” Grindelwald soothed, holding up his hands and pressing down thin air. Credence swallowed, tried to keep the tears from falling. “It’s perfectly alright.” Grindelwald stood, holding him at arms length by the shoulders. “You were relaxed… Perhaps a little bit tuned out. It just came to fill in the silence. Maybe even to see where you had gone.”

 _Where he had gone._ He’d liked where he had gone, sitting there for Grindelwald and being petted and just _present_. But he had let his guard too fully down, let himself be too vulnerable...

Credence walked into Grindelwald’s chest, tucked his head by his shoulder, against his black waistcoat. “Please hold me,” He said, bolder than he had any right to be. Grindelwald’s arms came around him tightly and relief coursed through him. Credence let his tears fall hot and wild. “I’m scared.” He admitted.

“There’s nothing to fear.” Credence could hear the smile in Grindelwald’s voice, the satisfaction. Grindelwald was pleased, and that made him a little less afraid. “I’m right here.” Credence felt himself being lifted easily like he had been that first night in New York.

Grindelwald deposited him on the bed, pulling Credence’s carefully made up covers loose and bundling it around him like kindling. Credence sat still, suddenly very aware of his own breathing. He felt like if he stopped inhaling and exhaling consciously he would suffocate.

“Here” Grindelwald pulled a box from the desk drawer and sat beside him on the bed. It was a shallow cardboard box, tied with a pretty ribbon. He unlaced it and lifted the lid to reveal a dozen fat truffles, each a different hue and shape, sitting on a bed of wax paper. He selected one from the middle, a light caramel color with a pink drizzle hardened on top. Grindelwald held the truffle in front of Credence’s lips.

“No tricks. Just ordinary sweets.” He reassured him in his gentlest, sincerest tone. Credence opened his mouth and let him place the truffle on his tongue. It began to melt immediately, rich as anything he’d ever tasted. Milky chocolate mixed with the sweet, light strawberry drizzle and the outer shell gave way to a different texture inside, which his teeth slid through like butter. He felt the sugar hit his bloodstream, eyes closing in simple pleasure.

When it was gone he licked his teeth to keep tasting it. Grindelwald hummed, stroked him at the hollow of his neck with this thumb. He liked to put his hand around Credence’s throat, squeezing ever so slightly, just a hint of pressure. Credence always wished he would stop, and at the same time wished he would squeeze harder.

“Have another.” Grindelwald said, and Credence’s first instinct was to refuse.

“Oh. I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I..” Credence faltered. “It would be…”

“Wasteful? Indulgent? Gluttonous?” Grindelwald laughed quietly, plucked a cream colored one from the box. “What did I tell you?”

“Those concerns are not mine.” Credence recited, opening his mouth for another tooth-achingly sweet bite.

“Right. You’re just my little pet, aren’t you? I can spoil you all I like.”

Credence felt Grindelwald’s hand move from the hollow of his throat down over his chest, into the blankets and onto his inner thigh, which he squeezed. He let himself be guided down onto his back. Grindelwald pulled the cover over both of them, undid Credence’s trousers with one hand and slid them all the way down to his knees. Credence raised his feet in turn as each was freed from the pant leg, and they were tossed on the floor.

The intimate heat of his naked skin under the blankets with Grindelwald so close felt inherently dirty. Credence felt arousal stirring in his belly, anticipation tinged on the edges with the trepidation he always felt at first. Grindelwald had made his fingers slick, Credence realized as he felt them touching him, ghosting up his thighs and finding that more intimate place, teasing slowly. Credence was swept up in the inevitibility of it, all he could do was let the sensations wash over him. Grindelwald's will was a momentous thing, pulled him like a tide. Resistance never crossed his mind.

Credence ground his hips into the bed, pleasure jolting through him at the teaasing finger. “Easy.” Grindelwald soothed as he pressed inside Credence. Credence felt a twinge of pain, but Grindelwald stopped at the first knuckle, kneading it into him. “Look at how hard you are, you sweet thing. What a little _slut_.”

Credence mewled pitifully.

“Stay stilll. I want to fuck you on my fingers.” He whispered in warning, and began to move his finger, pushing a little deeper. Credence tried to still himself, tried to be good. He was hard, precum already leaking from his slit and onto his trembling belly.

Grindelwald was apparently satisfied with the fit of one finger because he pulled out for a moment, only to add his middle finger, gently fucking and scissoring into him until he got to the last knuckle. The pain had faded into pleasure. He began to speed his motions, kneeling between Credence’s bent legs, wrist bent. Credence was rocked obscenely by the motion, the rough wooden headboard making contact with the wall in an unmistakable tempo.

Grindelwald curled his fingers, and Credence whined helplessly, head thrashing to one side. “See, that’s all you need,” He cooed. “All you ever needed, just to be spoiled and fucked, hmm? It's lucky I found you.”

Credence nodded, face red and lips parted. He longed to touch his aching cock but didn’t dare move a hand without permission, so he balled them in the sheets instead.

“Flip over.” Grindelwald said suddenly, pausing his movements. Credence carefully obeyed, feeling Grindelwald move with him, fingers still buried inside him. Grindelwald nudged Credence’s knees further apart, dragged his hips up and backward so his face was in the blankets, ass up, exposed and naked. He started fucking into him again with his fingers, gently, finding the new pace and angle. Credence’s cock was so close to the bed, where he could perhaps gain a little fiction, but he didn’t dare move his hips away from Grindelwald to try and grind into it. He whined, one side of his face pushed into the sheets, pushing his hips back so Grindelwald's fingers hit him even deeper.

“I know.” Grindelwald said sympathetically, curling his fingers again and making little starbursts of pleasure swim in Credence’s vision. When the torment turned from sweet to agonizing he began to beg, voice small and desperate.

“Please, Sir. _Please please please_ ,” He begged, feeling a spot where his saliva had begun to wet the sheets.

Grindelwald had apparently been waiting for just that. He reached underneath Credence’s hips, closed his free hand on the boy’s swollen cock. Credence cried out as he began to stroke him, still hitting that spot inside him with his fingers- that spot that made him want to come out of his skin with pleasure.

He came seconds later, messily spurting white ropes of come onto the sheets, over Grindelwald’s hand. As he came down from the heights of his orgasm, he realized he’d been moaning all through it, oh oh _oh's_  of pleasure, wanton as any whore.

He collapsed onto the bed a sticky wet mess. Grindelwald wasted no time in lowering himself onto him, grabbing a fistfull of hair very close to the scalp and tugging his head back while he entered him. He still went slowly, even though Credence was limp as a rag doll and loosened by his fingers. When Credence had taken him to the hilt he began to move, quick and dirty motions, sending oversensitive little shockwaves through Credence, who canted his hips up for Grindelwald even though he was spent. Grindelwald came quietly, right when he wanted to, it seemed, taking the skin of Credence’s neck in his teeth and biting just enough to make the boy yelp.

The moment he was spent he pulled out, and Credence felt a wet cloth on his backside, gentle and warm. Hands rolled him over and cleaned him up there too, cum drying to his belly. Credence watched through lidded eyes, drowsy and fucked-out.

“Thank you.”

Grindelwald bared his teeth in amusement. “Thank _you,_ sweet thing. Feel better?”

Credence felt no trace of the panic that he’d felt before, when the monster had begun to leech from him like blood in water.

He nodded, smiling sheepishly.

Even the thought of his sin, the jeapordy he'd been putting his immortal soul in, seemed distant and unreal. Grindelwald took care of him. He could please Grindelwald, was rewarded for good behavior. He didn't give a single damn about Hell or eternal lakes of fire. He recalled something Grindelwald had said to him late one night, when Credence was wringing his hands over what he'd done in New York.

"There is no Hell, child. There's only you and what you want. The only sin would be letting the cattle stand in our way." 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nod to ingrid magnussen of white oleander.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grindelwald comes back to their flat after another absence and gives Credence some much overdue attention.

Every time Grindelwald left it felt like a punishment. Sometimes Credence was alone for days. Credence would wander, a ghost in the streets of cities that were strange to him. He’d felt a ghost in New York too, but the streets were familiar and he spoke the language. Here he would get deliberately lost, then stay that way for hours, walking in the dark and the cold until he finally found his way back to their building and slide the key in the door, exhausted.

He would pull off his shoes one at a time, wincing at new blisters. Grindelwald had taught him how to make tepid bathwater as hot as he pleased, but on these nights it felt like sin, like indulgence. If he was being punished by Grindelwald’s absence, shouldn’t he at least have the decency to suffer?

But he had to bathe, so he made the water a little too hot. It stung his blisters, made him grit his teeth as he climbed in. His skin turned bright red and pain licked at him all over until he could stand it no longer and bade the water cool. It wasn’t much in the way of suffering, but it was something. It fed him. He sat hugging his knees until the water was cold.

Even with exhausting himself by wandering for hours, he couldn’t sleep. Moonlight kept him awake. When he did sleep, it was full of bad dreams. The tunnel in the city, Grindelwald never returning to him, tired of him, gone. Ma holding a hand out for his belt with the milky unseeing eyes of a corpse. He woke alone with no one to seek for comfort. He’d turned on the lights to ease his mind, adrift on the white expanse of the bed. It was if he’d survived a shipwreck only be stuck at sea, surrounded by naught but saltwater.

It was in a half-dream that he realized he was not alone. He felt weight depress the side of the bed closest to the door and leaned toward it, slowly rising toward consciousness as if from underwater.

“Sir?”

Grindelwald’s now familiar voice was like balm, like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead. “Who else, liebchen?” He felt the light touch of fingers stroke his hair.  
“You’re back.” Credence muttered sleepily, a smile forming on his lips. The fabled ship on the horizon. Rescue.

“Did someone miss me?”

Credence heard shoes discarded on the floor, the click of Grindelwald’s wand being set on the nightstand, the achingly familiar sound of a buckle as a belt was pulled from loops, which didn’t set his teeth on edge anymore, not even after that awful dream. Grindelwald pulled back the covers and climbed into the bed, making no comment about how Credence had been sleeping with the electric lights on. Credence pressed himself against his side, lay his head on his chest. His clothes were cold. They smelled of pine and country air, as if he’d been in another clime just moments ago.

“You smell like the woods.” Credence murmured.

“Mmm. Yet I found none of it’s nymphs to my liking.” Grindelwald curled Credence’s hair around his forefinger. “They lacked a certain hue to their locks…”  
Credence smiled, eyes still closed.

“Certain doe eyes…. A certain sweetness of temperament.”

“I destroyed three city blocks.” Credence pointed out sleepily, earning a huff of amusement from Grindelwald.

“And as a result you’ve been described in the papers as a ‘troubled young man’,” Grindelwald said. Credence stiffened. He’d been told nothing of the papers, of the investigation. He usually tried not to imagine it too hard.

“Uncooperative. Recalcitrant.”

Credence swallowed.

 “But we know better, don’t we?”

Credence felt unmoored suddenly, adrift in an alarming sort of way. He was a fugitive, after all.

“I can never go home, can I? ” He asked.

Credence felt Grindelwald shrug. “New York wasn’t your home. You have no home.” His words bore a carelessness that meant he didn’t want to discuss it further. For all the indulgences Grindelwald afforded him, Credence recognized that tone when he heard it. He fell silent.

“I am your home.” Grindelwald added more gently, squeezing Credence tighter to his side. Credence warmed, feeling gratitude and fierce loyalty bloom in his chest. Small kindnesses still felt like like mercy. Like absolution.

When he felt fingers under his chin he offered no resistance, let his face be upturned. The grip on his chin tightened controllingly but Grindelwald’s kiss was tender.

“I wanted to do that when I was the Director. Graves.” Grindelwald purred into Credence’s mouth. He did not say _when I was impersonating The Director_. Grindelwald spun the truth to suit him and suddenly it was scripture, it was law, it was on the Rosetta Stone.

“Meeting in those filthy Manhattan alleys…” Grindelwald continued- pressed another soft kiss to Credence’s mouth. He was met with yielding warmth.

“I wanted to touch you right there, with people walking by on the street, put my hand in your clothes and make you come for me.” He pressed a kiss to the corner of Credence’s mouth, turned the boy’s chin to expose the white column of his neck, which he only regarded, an animal surveying prey. Credence trembled.

“I wanted to hear you beg. You beg so prettily, as I’ve told you. Tell me, what would you have said to him?”

Credence didn’t know. He pictured their clandestine alley meetings- remembered the warm hands of the Director and his kind brown eyes. He remembered the rushed touches, the way Graves would appear and then leave again all too soon- how bereft he had felt for days after, like something had been cruelly taken from him. _Time is running out._

Grindelwald lowered his mouth to Credence’s neck. Credence braced for a bite, for a purple bruise to be sucked into his skin, but Grindelwald only left light, reverent kisses there, making gooseflesh race up his spine and down his arms, his nipples stiffening under his loose nightshirt. He was still trying to decipher what Grindelwald wanted. 

"What would you have said?" He asked Credence again "If he had cornered you against a wall, pressed in close? Kissed you?"

“Mr Graves.” Credence breathed. He would’ve said Mr Graves, at a loss for any other words. He felt Grindelwald smile against his skin. That’s what he’d wanted. Credence exhaled with relief. Did Grindelwald just want to take one last thing from the real Director Graves, the man whose body and life he’d violated and impersonated, done who knows what with? He didn’t know.

“There you go, liebchen. I used to revel in how you’d say it. That sweet little voice of yours. So unsure of yourself. You were practically _begging_ him to fuck you, but you didn’t even know how to ask.”

Credence felt his shame rising. It stung like a brand. He fought to tamp it down, keep the woundedness from showing in his eyes. Grindelwald wasn’t mocking him. Not really. This was play for him, the teasing almost this side of fond. Yet Grindelwald seemed to sense his unease.

“Shh. None of that. It’s alright.” He cooed, only a hint of amusement left in his voice. “I wanted you, too. Very much. Wanted to take you all for myself. You could feel it in the way he touched you. I know you could.”

Credence nodded, remembering how badly he’d wanted Graves to hold him, the undercurrent of desire that lit the air on fire in the space left between them.

“Say it now. Ask.” Grindelwald suggested cavalierly.

“Mr Graves….” He started, unsure. Grindelwald’s wolfish grin encouraged him, pale eyes alight. “Please... touch me.” His voice wavered a moment, which only spurred Grindelwald on like the smell of blood.

“My boy,” Grindelwald affected a perfect American accent, jarring Credence for a moment. It was the voice he’d first heard, the one that came out of Mr Grave’s mouth.

“Don’t be shy, sweetheart.” He continued in Grave’s brisque cadence, the term of endearment one Grindelwald himself seldom used. Grindelwald’s hand came up between his legs, it’s suggestive weight touching him through his thin cotton pyjamas. “I know what you wanted of him.”

Credence whined. Grindelwald’s words rang in his ears. He imagined Graves touching him in the same way, that soft gaze and his three-piece suit. The thought made his whole body feel hot. His dick twitched under Grindelwald’s hand. He gave it a gentle squeeze through fabric.

“You wanted him to rescue you, take you home, put you in his bed.” Grindelwald said, not with malice but with understanding. Credence inched his hips up, asking. In answer, Grindelwald’s hand tightened purposefully around the hard outline of his cock.

“But instead you got me.”

Credence shuddered and rocked his hips into Grindelwald’s hand. “I’m glad it’s….” His eyes shut tight. “...glad it’s you. I want you. I want to be yours.”

"But what about your Mr Graves?” Grindelwald toyed with him, reaching under his shirt to brush his finger over a nipple.

“Mr Graves was you. It was you.” Credence managed, stupid with pleasure. He felt precum wetting the inside of his thin undergarments.

“The whole time?” Grindelwald nipped Credence’s earlobe, pinched his sensitive nipple between his forefinger and thumb and pulled just to hear Credence whine.

“Are you sure?”

“No.” Credence said. “Yes? I don’t know.” He squirmed. “I just want to be good. Please?”

Grindelwald hummed approvingly against Credence’s temple. He loved it when Credence said please. He seemed especially fond of the times he meant it desperately. “You _are_ good, pet.” Grindelwald assured him. Credence waited for mercy or punishment, pinned beneath Grindelwald’s hands, very capable of either. “This is all in good fun. You know that. Relax.”

He wanted to. He’d rather be here than the church, a thousand times. Yet there was always an undercurrent, something impossibly dark that belonged to Grindelwald which hummed and moved just out of sight, always in his periphery. Something that reminded Credence of how blood tasted, dark water under ice, a moonless night. _Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves._

The physical pleasure he was feeling pushed to the foreground of his mind, the way Grindelwald was touching and holding him. His full attention turned on Credence like sunlight through a magnifying glass- making him incapable of entertaining any other thoughts for long. Credence lifted his hips accommodatingly when Grindelwald began to tug his undergarments off, raised his hands over his head to allow his shirt to be pulled over his head. Grindelwald spit in his hand before returning it to Credence's cock. He'd never seen Grindelwald make his hand slick without magic. The vulgarity of it sent a little thrill through him. He jumped at the skin-to-skin contact, the feel of Gridelwald's long fingers on his most intimate place still new to him. 

“That’s it,” He said. Credence whimpered, pleasure building under Grindelwald’s easy hand. “I want you to tell me when you’re close. Can you do that?”

Credence nodded, looking down to watch where Grindelwald was touching him, the obscenity of the sight giving him a guilty thrill. More precum leaked from the slit of his pink cock onto Grindelwald’s hand as Credence’s belly heaved with his hitching breaths, ribs sharp on the exhales. Soon he felt his climax building, and when Grindelwald let his free hand drift between Credence’s legs to the cleft of his ass he managed a strangled cry.

“I’m...” He’d never said those words out loud. His cheeks burned at their lewdness. “I’m gonna cum.”

Grindelwald’s hand let off, leaving Credence to whine in confusion and the sensation of stunted pleasure, cock bobbing helplessly toward his belly.

“Not yet. When I say.” Grindelwald instructed. Credence sucked a breath through his teeth and felt the release of climax recede, only to have Grindelwald’s hand return, stroking from base to tip and worrying his sensitive head on his palm, making him cry out in surprise.

“Shh.” Grindelwald admonished, though Credence knew that if he did not cry out or at least make piteous sounds Grindelwald would withhold mercy until he did.  
He was brought close again, his climax building quickly this time, pleasure a searing insistent wave.

“Sir,” He said, eyes fluttering shut. “Please, I’m close.”

Instead of removing his hand, Grindelwald’s touches became agonizingly slow, prolonging his pleasure without the possibility of release. He yelped when the hand that wasn’t wrapped around his cock delivered several healthy open-handed slaps high on back of his thigh.

Again he was teased, brought close and then denied relief. He didn’t know when he’d begun to cry, but his cheeks were wet and he was whimpering steadily, louder when his nipple was pinched harder or Grindelwald delivered an unpredictable slap to the soft flesh of his thighs, squeezing the pink skin after. Credence was undeniably wrecked, completely at Grindelwald’s mercy. _I am yours,_ he thought. _Did he need more proof or was this just for fun?_ He opened his eyes and saw the calm, satisfied way Grindelwald was looking at him, and guessed the latter.

If he was good, Grindelwald always rewarded him. In truth, Credence craved this attention. It felt good to be so vulnerable, to be given this chance to be good. He wanted to place his trust in Grindelwald, and for Grindelwald to see it. _I know you don’t trust me right now. But you will, in time._

Grindelwald pushed his thumb past Credence’s lips, watching Credence’s eyes as he sucked diligently. His gaze fell to Credence’s mouth as he dragged his thumb over Credence’s lower lip and down his chin, wet with Credence’s own saliva.

“Please,” Credence said beseechingly. Grindelwald’s mouth curved in a Cheshire grin.

“Shh. Alright." He started to stroke him again, and Credence began to fear as his strained pleasure mounted that he would be denied release all over again. Obediently, Credence breathed his warning. This time Grindelwald did not stop. Credence whined urgently in question, afraid to displease him.

“It’s alright, you can come. Come for me, Credence.”

Credence did. He tensed as his orgasm reached an almost painful height, the likes of which he had never felt, ropes of cum hitting his belly, toes curling to find purchase in the sheets, hips canting toward Grindelwald and his hand, the instrument of this torture-turned-euphoria. Still, when he was spent and the last flood of pleasure had receded, Grindelwald’s hand didn’t let up, didn’t stop. His abused cock was red and sensitive, as if every nerve in his body was suddenly concentrated there, raw and throbbing. Credence balled his fists in the sheets, tried to rock away unsuccessfully as Grindelwald easily followed his movements.

“Oh, are you done?” Grindelwald taunted. “No more?”

The sensitivity turned to pain. “It hurts,” Credence sobbed. His back arched and his head thrashed to one side, trying to escape the sensation without open defiance. He wanted to be good, but this was too much. “Please,” He begged. Still Grindelwald moved his hand, all the way up and down his shaft, twisting his wrist at the top, each time a fresh torment.

“Please what.”

“Please _stop_ ,” He whispered- and the torture ceased instantly. He sobbed in relief, turning to hide his red, tear-soaked face in Grindelwalds shirt. He was worried for a moment that he'd displeased Grindelwald, made a mistake in saying stop. But he felt arms come around his naked torso, rubbing soothing circles on his back, over silver constellations of old scars.

“You're alright.” Grindelwald said softly. Credence sniffed. He wanted the balm of praise more than anything. That would make it all fine. Grindelwald’s glacial eyes regarded him with something kin to affection. 

“You did beautifully, Credence. Good boy.”

Credence made a hoarse sound in his throat. He didn’t think he could speak, but he wanted Grindelwald to know he was listening.

“Would you get in a bath if I drew one for you? Would that feel good?”

Credence wanted to say that in this moment he would step into the mouth of Hell, into an active volcano, if Grindelwald bade him, but he only nodded weakly.

***

Credence was sitting still in the bathwater, resting his cheek on the lip of the clawfoot tub. Gellert dipped his hand in the water, making sure it was still hot but not uncomfortably so.

He’d taken his exploits a little far tonight with Credence. He knew it. It was easy to get carried away with one so needy and compliant.

He knelt beside the tub and tucked a strand of Credence’s mussed hair behind his ear. Credence lifted his head to smile prettily at him. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t pushed the boy too hard, wounded the trust he’d built quite deliberately over the last few months. If he had to build it up again, damaged… or if Credence became unmanageable he would have lost valuable time. Yet Credence had responded so well, been so immersed and sweetly at his mercy ... If these sorts of acts served to solidify Credence’s trust in him... well that would be just fine.

Gellert tipped Credence’s chin up high, and submerged a pewter cup into the bathwater until it filled. Slowly, he poured it over the boy’s head, brushing his bangs back, placing his hand on Credence’s forehead to keep water out of his eyes. Wet, his hair shone like obsidian. Grindelwald soaped it up with his hands, massaging the suds into Credence’s scalp. Credence’s head began to drop back to a natural position, lost in the sensation. Gellert tipped it back up with a gentle finger under the boy’s chin. Credence’s eyes were closed, a contented little smile on his lips. _No,_ he thought.  _He’s not lost to you at all._

He rinsed Credence’s hair with water from the cup, methodical, over and over until it was clean. Credence kept his chin tilted up for this mockery of a baptism, naked as sin and looking lulled to a state of numb euphoria. 

“Have you been eating?” He asked. Credence shrugged after a moment, like the words took some time to reach him. His collarbone looked a little sharp again, his ribs more easily visible.

“Some, Sir. Yes.” He replied.

“Not enough.” Gellert remarked. "I want you decently fed, focused."

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m going to have to hand-feed you more, is that it?”

Credence opened his eyes, looked at him sidelong through his lashes, interest clearly piqued.

“Alright.” He agreed softly.

Gellert raised an eyebrow. Credence was always surprising him. Where at first he’d seen weakness, a pitiable thing cowering like a kicked dog, he now often glimpsed steel.

“Done.” He said aloofly. “No morsel passes your lips unless I put it there. Everything I feed you, you eat.”

Credence blinked at him from the tub, wet and dripping, thinking over the implications of this new rule. 

“What about when you’re gone?” He asked carefully, suspicion flashing over his angluar features.

He smiled fondly. “It’s not a trick, Credence. The rule does not apply when I’m gone. I would not starve you.”

Credence nodded a little sheepishly.

“Good. Finish up and dry off.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Credence grows curious when he meets Vinda Rosier. Grindelwald placates him. (Not an explicit chapter but some d/s implied)

In his nightmares he saw the man and the woman from the tunnel again. He dreamed other things too, awful things. He stood in a city reduced to smoking rubble, everything black and charred as if by dragon’s breath. Corpses and dying horses littered the streets, overturned automobiles with electric headlights still on. He heard footsteps behind him, but didn’t turn. He knew who they belonged to. The hand on his shoulder was achingly familiar.

When he woke he often couldn’t move for a few moments. His body was stiff, caught in it’s own flight response while paralyzed with sleep. He fought it best he could, until he could flex his fingers and his toes, finally wrenching into a tight coil on the bed, bidding the trailing tendrils of dreams to leave him.

Credence woke again mid morning. There was a chill in the room. Fall was fast on the heels of summer, and frost covered the grass outside most mornings now. He draped a blanket around his shoulders and went to the window, curled up in the deep sill with his cold feet tucked under him. He was hungry. He hoped Grindelwald would appear sometime before afternoon so he could eat. But the hunger felt good. It felt like obedience.

***

“Did you think I’d neglect to look after you?”

Credence shook his head, waited for Grindelwald to touch him. His body leaned a fraction closer without his consent, seeking contact.

“Leave you hungry? Let you starve? Hmm?” Grindelwald teased gently, watching Credence quicken toward him, hungry as usual in every way. What self-consciousness Credence had felt in the presence of the woman in their apartment had melted away like a frost. Now he’d all but forgotten her, sitting across the room in an armchair with her legs crossed and hands folded in her lap.

“Little lamb…” Grindelwald cooed, mouth twisting into a self-satisfied grin when the boy’s eyes closed at the endearment. Vinda, who’d been politely averting her eyes, looked up to watch Credence close the distance between them, tuck his head onto Grindelwald’s shoulder. Her gaze was cool, the penciled arches of her brows revealing nothing of her inner thoughts. Grindelwald turned his grin to her.

“Poor thing’s famished, Vinda. We have a little contract, you see, where…”

Credence glanced up from Gellert’s shoulder as if to plead with him not to tell, not to share that particular detail with this woman he didn’t know. Grindelwald regarded him for a moment, took pity.

“Well. I think we should finish our conversation over dinner.”

Vinda spread her hands, the red varnish on her fingernails catching the light. “Wouldn’t want your boy to suffer on my account. He _looks_ hungry, Gellert.”

“What did I tell you, Credence?” Grindelwald said into Credence’s temple as he led them out of the apartment and into chilly night air. “Need to feed you better, get some color in your cheeks. People will think I’m mistreating you.”

“What’s that dreadful muggle story?” Vinda wondered, heels clicking on the cobblestone. “The one they tell children about the witch? She fattens up the village brats and eats them?”

Grindelwald huffed in amusement. “Of all people, Miss Rosier, I would least expect you to know the plot of a muggle fairy tale.”

Vinda sniffed, tugging the belt of her coat tighter around her waist as they walked. “I know things, Gellert,” she said nonchalantly.

“Hansel and Gretel.” Credence offered.

Vinda snapped her fingers. “Hansel and Gretel. Yes. And Hansel… what does he do to evade her oven?”

Credence held onto Gellert’s arm tighter as they walked, their shoulders almost the same height now that Credence wasn’t slouching so much. The gruesome fairy tales aways made him a little queasy. Someone always ended up in an oven.

“He..” Credence cleared his throat. “He puts a bone through the bars of the cage instead of his finger...a chicken bone or...I don’t remember. When the witch feels the bone she thinks he is still too thin to eat and…” He trailed off, the ruse explained.

Vinda nodded. “Clever boy. Although, she was a particularly dim witch.”

“What unflattering propaganda.” Grindelwald said, stopping outside of a restaurant, one of the few still left open at the late hour.

Credence’s stomach was gnawing at him by the time they sat down. Someone dropped off a basket of hot bread, and Grindelwald let it sit for a long moment without stopping his conversation with Vinda. Credence’s mouth was watering, but he stayed very still and waited to be fed. After another long moment, Grindelwald tore off a generous piece and passed it to Credence. He took it gratefully, tried to eat it slowly and politely as possible. He couldn’t thank Grindelwald, not without interrupting his conversation. He chewed silently, swallowed.

_“In these muggle cities…”_

_“...I can’t risk Credence being recognized among us. I have more mobility this way, for now.”_

Credence tried to focus on their conversation, it felt important and he was beginning to sense that he understood very little of what was really going on, but he was still so hungry. It had been two days.

_“That’s why I need you to do it, Vinda.”_

_“Consider it done.”_

When a server set plates of food down Credence couldn’t even remember what Grindelwald had ordered. A ceramic bowl full of delicious smelling stew was right in front of him. He glanced up for permission. Grindelwald leaned in to speak quietly with Credence as Vinda spread a linen napkin on her lap, smoothed it. Grindelwald squeezed Credence’s knee under the table.

“I’m sorry I was gone so long. It wasn’t intentional. You could’ve had something to eat.”

Credence shrugged. He kept his voice just above a whisper. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed with me. I didn’t want to break the rules.”

“I know.” Grindelwald squeezed his thigh again. “But I wouldn’t have punished you, if you had. It’s not that sort of rule.”

Credence just stared at the tablecloth, unwilling to concede the point. 

"But you did well." Grindelwald added. "You did so well, Credence." Grindelwald pulled back, sipped from a cup of red wine. He winked at Credence. Credence saw Vinda’s eyebrow raise a fraction, felt her gaze fall on him. He ignored the heat that crept up his cheeks and turned his attention instead to his first meal in days.

As he ate he remained acutely aware of Grindelwald’s hand on his thigh. It was still, unassuming. Just a warm, anchoring weight. 

**

Grindelwald was staying with him tonight, he realized as he lay back on the bed, sated and drowsy. Miss Rosier was gone, and they were alone. Grindelwald put out the light in the other room, and came to sit on the bed next to Credence.

“Feeling better?” He asked. Credence nodded his contentment.

“Who was she?” Credence ventured.

“Miss Vinda Rosier. A close friend and confidante.” Grindelwald stroked Credence’s hair. “A talented and insightful witch.”

“She said something…about people opposing you.. That’s not just because of me, is it?”

“Mmm.” Grindelwald moved a little closer, leaning back on the pillows and changing the angle of his shoulders to better stroke Credence’s hair. “No, it’s not just because of you.”

“Why do people oppose you?” Credence asked, voice almost betraying his nerves. He steadied it. “Other wizards and witches?”

“I don’t think tonight is the time for a crash course in magical history, Credence.”

Credence worried his lip, listening carefully to Grindelwald’s tone for irritation or displeasure. He heard none. “I understand why people want to hurt me.” He said carefully. “Because of what I’ve done… what I am. But why you? What have you done?” _Other than help me._

Grindelwald’s hand never paused his gentle ministrations to Credence’s hair, but still he waited with baited breath, afraid he’d become too bold.

“Well,” Grindelwald said mildly, “I’m sure you well recall the rules of the church, of the woman you called Ma?”

Credence nodded stiffly. He’d grown up with them. The sun rose and set by Ma’s rules. There’d been nothing else.

“Were they always fair? Her rules? Did they make sense?”

“No.”

Grindelwald lay a hand on Credence's belly, circled one finger absently. Credence's nerves lit up at the touch, listening. 

“They were oppressive and cruel, from what I’ve gathered.” Grindelwald offered.

Credence pushed himself closer against Grindelwald’s side. He felt a chaste kiss pressed to the crown of his head. 

“And on borrowed authority. In her case, citing scripture as an excuse for the rod, in place of reason.”

“Yes, Sir.” Credence agreed, unsure of what he was supposed to say.

“There’s other schools of thought in the world, pet. Many others. For instance, if I said that there was no clear moral certainties, only consequences for every action which everyone must live with… would that make sense?”

Credence thought of his own actions, of the widespread consequences still being suffered. He nodded.

“If you could make a choice that saved one life, say a child from drowning, it was completely in your power, you would do it?”

Credence agreed. 

“What if instead you could stop an ocean liner from striking an iceberg and drowning, oh, say dozens more innocent people. But the child would drown. What then?”

Credence thought about it, tried to stop picturing the child in question as Modesty, her golden hair fanned out in icy black water. “I’d choose the ocean liner.” He said quietly.

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be right to save one person at the expense of so many others.” He said. He thought of the Aurors in the tunnel in New York. That’s what they’d been trying to do by stopping him. Save lives. Guilt split him like a fault.

“It’s not always so dire an example, but that’s the idea. There are those in our own world, Credence, who make decisions, and by that I mean laws, based entirely from your mother’s narrow point of view. Not stating a particular God except themselves as their true north, perhaps, but it’s the same outcome.”

“And you… you think that’s the wrong choice.”

“When all suffer as a result? I do.”

Credence understood the principle, but couldn’t guess how it played out, what specifics Grindelwald was possibly referring to. Infighting in the magical community seemed absurd to him. Was there no cohesion anywhere? Fixed stars? “So you think things should be different.”

 Grindelwald let his gaze drop to Credence's lips. He raised a finger to where they parted, traced them. Credence stilled his breath, waited to see if the touch would stay, turn into something more. But Grindelwald only let his fingers graze Credence's cheek before he dropped his hand. 

“It’s not fair to ask you to understand completely, Credence, not right now. I’ve been deliberately trying to protect you from it. You needed time to rest.”

Credence  _had_ been resting. Despite all his gnawing anxieties, Grindelwald had created a safe haven for him to lick his wounds and experience being taken care of. He'd put on the blindfold willingly, that very first night in New York. He'd tied it behind his own head and held out his wrists for more restraints. 

“What do you want to change about your… _our_ world?”

Grindelwald tilted Credence’s face up with a finger under his chin. “You’re a child of the New World, Credence. Did you hear of manifest destiny? The mantra that fought the petty wars, pressed all the way to the Pacific ocean?”

Credence nodded.

“It’s time to manifest ours. It is not temperance to concede the whole world to no-maj’s, to let them rule by majority when it is so easily within our reach to balance the scales. It’s weakness. It’s unspeakably ugly.”

Credence licked his lips, a little perplexed now. “Don’t wizards and witches have things of their own? Places and… and things separate from the no-maj world?”

Grindelwald nodded. “They do. And you’ll see them. Don’t worry any more about it any more tonight, liebchen. You’re right where you need to be. Everything is perfectly alright.”

Credence was satisfied with that. It was enough to him that Grindelwald wasn’t planning to keeping him in the dark- he was willing to talk to him. If he could ask better questions, perhaps he could glean clearer answers. And he was tired.

“In,” Grindelwald bid, lifting the cover for Credence to maneuver under. He let the blanket be pulled up to his chest.

“Are you going to stay?” Credence asked hopefully.

“With you? How could I possibly resist?” Grindelwald’s tone was playful, gentle enough for Credence not to let himself feel mocked, though a little heat rose in his cheeks. He took pride in the fact that Grindelwald found him alluring, praised him as beautiful when he touched him. It made him feel like he had inherent worth. Grindelwald got in beside him.

“C'mere." Grindelwald gathered Credence close to him. "Do you trust me?”

Credence nodded surely, tucking himself in close to be held. “You know I do.” He whispered.

“I know.” Grindelwald soothed, kissing Credence’s temple.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> very dub-con body modification ahead

Grindelwald was sometimes difficult to read, but he was not difficult to please. Credence had decided that was much better than the other way around. Over time he’d picked up on how Grindelwald responded to other people. He had no patience for stupidity, or boorishness, but seemed amused when someone challenged him. Credence had witnessed a new look come into his eyes when that happened, like he was seeing them for the first time.

  
After that Credence worried he must be terribly boring to Grindelwald. Since the beginning he had done nothing but capitulate. How could he do anything else? He’d always been at someone’s mercy. But Grindelwald didn’t seem to think him stupid, or pathetic, though Credence often mentally accused himself of being both.

  
On the contrary, Grindelwald was patient with him, and often generous. It was a very private sort of gentleness he afforded Credence, one that at first rang of danger in Credence’s heart. But the danger he feared never seemed to manifest. If he did something wrong, he was corrected simply. If he was good, he was rewarded. A soft hand, a gentle word, some indulgence or another.

Grindelwald gave these simple gestures to Credence freely- as a man might toss a coin to a beggar without as much as a second glance. But these reassurances were paramount to Credence, strange runes he wanted to know by heart, by touch alone. All his instincts had long since been turned upside-down, useless. He had no compass to follow but Grindelwald, and he clung to this new true north.

  
“What are you thinking about, pretty?”

  
Credence startled, nearly dropping the book he’d been neglecting to read for the last five minutes, lost in thought. He’d been reading for several hours, legs tucked under him in a swaybacked armchair near the warmth of the hearth.

 He glanced at the clock on the mantle and learned it was already half past midnight. Not that it mattered. Grindelwald didn’t care when he woke or slept, what he read or when he came and went, if he tidied the kitchen or not.  “Nothing really, Sir.” Credence lied.

  
“I find that unlikely.” Grindelwald replied offhandedly.

He usually left Credence alone when he was curled up reading. Credence felt strangely cornered for a moment, brushed it off as an ungrateful thought. Grindelwald’s hand went into his hair, a familiar caress that Credence’s whole being rose to meet like a lunar tide. The nature of the touch changed when Grindelwald made a fist of Credence’s dark hair, squeezing a little. The sensation wasn’t wholly unpleasant, and Credence felt his eyes close and his lips part. His head dipped back, neck bared. The thrill of vulnerability surged through him like a current. Grindelwald tightened his grip, made it so that it hurt in a full, aching kind of way. Credence made a little noise in his throat, whether in response to the first twinges of pain or to convey his willingness, he wasn’t sure himself. The fist at the base of his skull released him. Credence was dizzy at the loss of contact.

  
“Sweet thing.” Grindelwald said under his breath, and smoothed Credence’s disheveled hair back down with the palm of his hand. “Credence.”

  
“Sir?” Credence breathed, suddenly aware of how needy he must look, how easily affected by a suggestive touch.

  
“You’ve always been good for me.”

  
Credence’s heart leapt at the tone of Grindelwald’s praise, low and confidential.

  
“Always a good boy, hmm?”

  
Credence nodded, painfully aware of how close Grindelwald was standing yet not an inch of them touched. It was much harder than if Grindelwald would just touch him, give him something to ground himself.

  
“Will you let me do something to you? Something new?”

  
Adrenaline surged in his stomach, all the way through him to the tips of his fingers. _What?_ He wanted to ask. _Do What?_ He held the question tightly between gritted teeth. Grindelwald cocked his head a quarter to the right, watching with naked enjoyment as Credence squirmed.

  
“Yes, Sir.” (The _what_ remained firmly between his teeth.)

  
Grindelwald’s smile widened, and his hand went back in Credence’s hair, doing nothing but letting it’s weight settle him. “Don’t you want to know what it is I’m implying first? Before you agree?”

  
Credence recognized this game. It was one Grindelwald had played with him since the beginning, since he first had coaxed Credence into his arms that night in New York.  
“No.” He answered mildly as he could, never breaking their eye contact. He told himself he knew how to play. He was _good_ at it, even. Grindelwald didn’t ever seem to want to do anything to him he couldn’t handle, he reminded himself. If he did, he would’ve done so by now.

  
“No? You’re sure?”

  
Credence shivered at the undercurrent in Grindelwald’s voice, that unnerving amusement that often laced his words. “I trust you, Sir.”  _Lying is a sin_ , some old reflex chided from the cobwebs.

  
Grindelwald clucked his tongue, placed a hand over his own heart theatrically to show how touched he was. Credence felt dread in his throat as he swallowed dryly, wondering not for the first time if he was horribly, horribly foolish.

  
“Oh, kitten.” Grindelwald held a hand out to Credence. “Come.”

  
Credence unfolded his stiff legs from under himself and took Grindelwald’s offered hand. They’d been in these rooms for a month now. Grindelwald came and went at all hours. But Credence was never left anywhere without a warm bed, clothes, food, money. And recently, a tall stack of books, as well as records for the phonograph Credence found in a coat closet and dusted off carefully.

  
Grindelwald stopped them in the middle of the bedroom floor, took Credence’s shoulders in his hands and kissed him on the mouth. Credence stepped closer, pressing himself flush against Grindelwald’s black waistcoat, his stocking feet bumping up against the steel toes of boots. Grindelwald hummed approvingly into his mouth, wrapped him in his arms and kissed him more deeply.

  
Credence let himself go weak, knowing he was supported by encircling arms, letting the still-new sensation of being kissed overwhelm him. It was best that way. If he had reservations, if he was nervous or self conscious, it became a tug of war between shame and succumbing to how good it felt to let go.

  
Grindelwald trailed his kisses to Credence’s jaw. Credence let his head fall back a little, turning his chin sideways to give access to his neck, which he knew Grindelwald was fond of kissing, sucking, biting.

  
Ticklishness, underlined by arousal, caused a shiver to run through him and he had to fight from reflexively pulling away from the sensations on his sensitive skin, each inch a new delight, earlobe to collarbone. The act of making himself hold fast as waves of gooseflesh rose on his body felt giddy. He felt the first shift into that weightless, gauzy place where he was only supposed to be good, a thing that would earn him the praise and favor he craved so fiercely.

  
Grindelwald sucked a mark onto Credence’s neck, pulled the blood to the surface hard until he’d elicited a little noise from the boy. Satisfied, he pulled away.

 "Let me mark you truly.” He suggested evenly.

 Credence was already nodding.

Grindelwald steered Credence to the bed, a high and spacious thing draped with several warm blankets to ward off the deep chill that pervaded the rooms at night. Grindelwald nudged his shoulder and he scooted back to lie among the pillows.

Grindelwald sat at his side with one knee propped on the bed. He reached for Credence’s shirt, and Credence lifted his arms so that it slid over his head. The button at the front his trousers was undone deftly and he lifted his hips to allow them to be removed. He was quite aware that he was only in his underthings now, despite having been more naked a dozen times under Grindelwald’s cool gaze.

  
“I won’t say this won’t hurt a little.” Grindelwald told him in warning, almost sympathetic. Credence thought it sounded like he was being given an out, but that was all wrong, that wouldn’t get him anywhere.

  
“I know.” Credence said, his voice sounding small even to his own ears.

  
Grindelwald smiled at him fondly and extracted his wand from in his suit jacket. Credence blanched, never having been at the business end of that imposing object, ever. He’d seen the things it could do, the ease with which Grindelwald wielded it to exact his will upon the natural world.

  
“Are you afraid?” Grindelwald paused, seeming genuinely curious.

  
Credence knew when honesty was more prudent than lying. “Yes.”

  
Grindelwald let his wand hand drop to the bed, the plush covers almost enveloping the offending object from sight, and leaned in closer. “Did you mean it when you said you trusted me? Or was that a lie?”

  
Credence also knew well when it was more prudent to lie, just a little, than to be honest. “I meant it. Sir... But I have a question.”

  
Grindelwald raised his eyebrows.

  
“Do... you want me to be quiet? Or… can I make noise?"

  
Grindelwald pulled back from him to sit up straighter, looking pleased. “Brave boy. You might feel compelled, in a moment, to make a little noise. That’s perfectly alright. Make all the noise you need.” He paused. “And Credence...know that if you ask me to stop, I will.”

  
Credence was relieved he didn’t have to be silent through whatever was to come, but he knew the trap had been laid. _If you ask me to stop, I will._ He had no doubt Grindelwald would keep his word on that, but it would be admitting defeat. It would be a little betrayal. He would not utter the word. He couldn’t.

  
“Thank you.” He said as Grindelwald raised his wand again.

  
He pushed Credence’s knees apart gently, ran a hand over the smooth skin of his inner thigh once, twice. Not meant to soothe, Credence realized. Just appraising.  
The tip of his wand hovered half an inch from the vulnerable skin there.

  
“Yes?” Grindelwald asked.

  
Credence thought it terribly cruel to ask. _Yes to what?_   “Yes.” He whispered.

  
Grindelwald muttered something under his breath that was unintelligible to Credence. Immediately, pain erupted on his skin like a torch, a razor- radiating outward. His breath caught and he watched, unable to look away, as an angry red mark began to appear on his skin, drawing blood like a blade.

His breath came fast and shallow through his nose as he ground his teeth and his mind tried to categorize the pain, asses and control it, but it kept getting away from him. Grindelwald moved the tip of his wand and the pain followed, sharp and hot.

  
Keenly, he wished his hands were bound behind his back or to the posts of the bed, but it was too late to ask now. He grabbed fistfuls of blankets until his knuckles were white. A triangular mark began to take shape, one Credence began to recognize all too easily as the same he had clung to so many times, letting the corners bite his palms. The same mark he had touched his lips to reverently, calling for help or deliverance.

  
“I know.” Grindelwald gentled him. “It’s alright... Tell me.”

  
Given such blatant permission, Credence felt a series whimpers rise from his throat as his tender flesh was cut. They turned to a sob and he felt tears sting his eyes, hot and immediate as Grindelwald steadied him with a heavy hand on his abdomen.

  
“Easy, pet.” He soothed, not glancing up, completely focused on where the tip of his wand was making a deep circle. Credence’s head thrashed against the pillows one way, then another, trying not to look. That somehow only made it worse. He saw blood trickling freely from his thigh, warm trails that stained the blankets as they ran from his skin.

  
In terms of pain it was not necessarily worse than things he’d experienced before, something his Ma might have been capable of in a particularly self-righteous mood. It wasn’t spaced out into blows, though, so there was no reprieve, not even a moment where he could catch his breath and prepare for the next wave.

In terms of context, he still prefered this. There wasn’t any blame in this. It wasn’t a punishment. Credence would rather let Grindelwald carve him till the clean gleam of bone showed through than to be back at the church for even a moment. He tried to glean resolve from that fact even as his whines grew more pitiful.

The last line was the worst, a straight cut that felt deeper than the rest, maybe because it passed twice over his already mutilated flesh. Credence bit into his hand, staying perfectly still aside from an involuntary full-body tremble.

  
At last Grindelwald pulled the hateful wand away. He tucked it again against his side and Credence let his hand fall from his mouth, unaware until now he’d bitten deep marks into his knuckles. The pain ceased to be searing and instead burned meanly. Blood still leaked freely from the wounds, making him a little queasy.

  
“Look at you,” Grindelwald said, admiring his work. He ran his thumb along the edge of the cuts and Credence whimpered and flinched, but let him. He prodded around it, paying no mind to the blood getting on his fingertips.

  
Satisfied, Grindelwald looked at Credence’s face for the first time since he’d started. “Do you want me to make it to stop hurting?” 

  
Beyond petty games, Credence managed a quaky _please._  Grindelwald passed a hand over the skin and the pain evaporated with the blood, leaving prominent but closed wounds. He marvelled at this new feature now that he could see it clearly. All that was left were perfectly straight and slender marks where an hour ago there had been nothing and a moment ago had been a mess of pain and blood.

  
“Is that better liebchen?”

  
Credence nodded. The new tears that stung his eyes were grateful ones. He felt overwhelmed by the loss of pain and the revulsion that came from open flesh and flowing blood. Grindelwald positioned himself so his back was against the pillows, gathering a weak and lightheaded Credence into his arms like a ragdoll.

  
“You did so well. You knew I wouldn’t leave you in pain, didn’t you?”

Credence didn't answer, just settled with his back pressed against Grindelwald’s chest. He let his head loll against Grindelwald’s shoulder woozily. This part was better than his past experiences, too. Grindelwald always offered to heal him of any discomfort, clearly uninterested in Credence’s sustained misery. If he was asked to suffer, it wasn’t ever for long. And after came the things Credence so craved from Grindelwald, things he was miraculously given.

  
“Credence.” Grindelwald said, tilting Credence’s chin so he could look at the boy in his arms. “Same rules apply, hmm?” He reached two fingers to the mark on Credence’s inner thigh, gently tapped twice.

Credence understood, remembering the rules of the pendant. He nodded, feeling a little swell of pride. Grindelwald had made it permanent, connected Credence to him not through an object but through blood.

He wondered if anyone else Grindelwald kept near to him was was so marked. The thought brought a wave of jealousy he had no right to.

“Is this how you...with the others?” Credence asked vaguely, half wishing he could swallow those words back up. Grindelwald understood immediately, but only laughed softly.

  
“No. Only with you, child. You think I’d do this to just anyone?” He circled a finger over the raised weals and Credence shivered. “No one...” He cooed into the shell of Credence’s ear, “...is as precious to me as you.” His hand shifted from the new scars to cup between Credence’s legs, the flat of his palm over the fabric of Credence’s undergarment. “And now you’re all mine, aren’t you?”

Credence’s dick twitched under Grindelwald’s hand. “I already was.” He breathed, pushing his hips up against it, craving friction.

Grindelwald hummed at that, nosing Credence’s temple and pressing a hungry kiss to his jaw. He palmed Credence more deliberately, pinning him to his chest with his other arm. Credence struggled a little, just to feel how unrelenting the grip was. He could budge it not at all, and that fact only made him harder.

Grindelwald pressed more kisses to his ear and neck as he roughly tore Credence’s last remaining clothing from his slim hips. Pinned with his back to Grindelwald’s chest, Credence squirmed fruitlessly, his impatience earning him a hard slap to his outer thigh. He cried out in surprise more than anything, and Grindelwald’s forearm came up higher, holding him across his shoulders now, making struggling even more impossible. He pinned Credence’s right leg easily with his own, dragged it open a bit so Credence’s legs were more spread than before. Credence tested that too, trying to free his leg to absolutely no avail.

  
“Be still.” Grindelwald growled and Credence went slack, giving up all playful defiance.

  
He felt dizzy, grounded only by how badly he needed Grindelwald to touch him. When he did, it was too gentle and too slow. Credence could do nothing but pant and grasp wherever he could reach, grabbing fistfulls of Grindelwald’s trousers on either side of him and feeling pleasure begin to mount in his belly. He wanted it faster, but Grindelwald liked to control Credence’s pleasure as much as his pain, and his hand only stroked languidly over Credence’s dick, thumbing precum from his slit just slowly and carelessly enough to make Credence want to beg. His whine was petulant.

  
“Enough,” Grindelwald told him in his ear, “Nothing you can do, is there?”

  
“No. Sorry, Sir,” Credence replied in a strained voice. Only then did Grindelwald grip him tighter, move faster. He held Credence fast as his breaths got more erratic- until he was crying out hoarsely and spilling pearly cum over his own trembling belly and Grindelwald’s insistent hand.

  
Grindelwald returned Credence’s pinned leg to him, loosened his grip across the boy’s shoulders. Credence twitched and shuddered, feeling a soft glow settle over his limbs. He looked down past his cum-spattered belly at the mark between his legs like a brand.

  
Grindelwald moved out from under Credence, helping him to lie back alone. He cleaned him with a muttered word, pulled a blanket over him. Credence rushed to offer himself to Grindelwald, who was unpredictable in his appetites. Sometimes he fucked Credence, sometimes asked for his mouth. Other times he made Credence come and had no interest in him after that.

  
“Sir? Do you… Can I...”

  
Grindelwald waited. He was going to make him say it, Credence realized. He tried again. “Would... you like to fuck me?”

  
Grindelwald’s eyes narrowed and his mouth turned up at the corners. He reached down to brush a strand of dark hair from Credence’s eyes.

  
“Oh I would, sweet thing, very much so. But there’s somewhere I need to be. Maybe if I’m in a good mood when I return I’ll see if you’re still feeling so generous.”

  
“I love you.” Credence told him with sleepy conviction, eyelids suddenly heavy.

  
“Mmm.” Grindelwald was pulling a heavy coat over his suit jacket, black wool with buttons that shone like polished stones as he fastened them. “Well that’s not so unusual.”

  
Credence felt Grindelwald's hand on his hair before it slid away and the sound of boots on hardwood receded. The front door opened and shut, and he heard the click of the charmed metal deadbolt sliding back into place on its own from the inside.

Credence felt the weighty silence of the dark rooms, a tingling sensation on the inside of his thigh. When he exhaled he could see his breath. He pulled another blanket over himself so he didn’t wake in an hour shivering.

 

  

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Credence needs help. Grindelwald comes and gets him. Credence is afraid of the touble he's in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blanket warning for violence/assault (not sexual). whump, angst.

Credence grew restless when left alone for more than a night, pacing from the window to the hearth and back again, unable to focus on anything in particular.

He tried to sleep but it wouldn't come. When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he put on his warmest clothes and went out into the street, into the night air. He could see the rising moon and it filled him with childlike energy, made him want to run.

  
When they had stayed in the other lodgings he'd until he was lost and tired. But it was bitterly cold now. His face stung and his legs were cold and he longed to find somewhere with a fireplace after only twenty minutes. He followed the warm, welcoming lights of a tavern inside.

Once seated at the old wooden bar, he ordered a spiked hot cider to sip while he listened to conversation around him, watched a bartender polish glasses.

  
The noise of the tavern was better than the silence of their rooms when he got this way. He knew it would do nothing to fill the void that Grindelwald left, the longing that would gnaw at him until he came back, but it was _noise_ , at least.

  
He wasn’t oblivious to his surroundings.  Before long he felt a few sidelong stares thrown his way from down the bar. One man ebowed another and jerked his head in Credence’s direction. Whatever he said made the other man laugh and pound his glass on the bartop twice. A barmaid glanced up at them, mistaking the banging glass as a rude call for another drink. She gave Credence a lingering glance as she turned away.

  
Suddenly, Credence wanted nothing more than to get out of there, sooner rather than later. He slid the girl her money and a tip, trying to cover it with his hand until it was exchanged into hers. He didn’t even tarry to put his gloves back on, only shoved them in his coat pocket. Bells tied to the door jingled noisily as he left the din of the tavern for the silence of the dark winter street.

He felt the first sliver of fear slide between his ribs when he heard the tavern door behind him, the same bells chiming again. He glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, it was the two men who had been eyeing him, headed his way with hands shoved in their coat pockets and strides as purposeful as his.

  
Credence broke into a run. He heard their footsteps change gaits too as they gave chase. His heart thudded painfully in his chest as he turned a corner, sprinted for the next one, trying to lose them.

  
A memory came to him, clear as his pounding feet on the slick cobblestone. He remembered one winter day in New York, maybe twelve years gone now, when he’d been running from someone else. He’d had a suspicion they picked him because he looked like an easy target, combined with the fact he was handing out religious literature on the streets. That sort of thing invited lots of looks and sneers. Occasionally someone had opinion enough to spit at him or jab an elbow in his ribs as they passed. But that day some older boys had chased him, and his legs were not so long as they are now. They caught him and ruined the rest of this flyers, took a few opportunistic swings while they held him down. He remembered the glee in their eyes long after the memory of their fists had faded.

  
Ma had only looked at him when he came in dirty with dried blood on his lip and his eyebrow. She’d sniffed indifferently, looking back to the mending in her lap, needle glinting in the lamplight. Credence remembered being relieved she hadn’t asked about the flyers as he walked past her to climb the stairs to his bed.

  
Tonight there were not schoolboys chasing him, but grown men. That thought made his feet barely touch the ground as he ran. He passed closed shops and cafes, dark window after dark window, rounded another corner. He would have outrun them had it not been for the patch of black ice under a drainage pipe that made the cobblestones underfoot slicker than the skating rink in Central Park. In half a second he’d hit the stones hard on his right side, pain flaring in his elbow, but lost no time in scrambling back up to his feet. He’d just started to run again when he felt the impact of one of them slam into his back, knocking him breathlessly back to the ground.

  
They hauled him easily ten feet into an alley, seeking cover. Credence thought with strange clarity that at least it was somehow less offensive than to be assaulted right there on the street. He struggled, hoping he could make another run for either side of the open alley but the two of them had no trouble pinning him and emptying his trouser and coat pockets of money. Credence wondered if these men were locals or drifters, and wondered which he was himself as they ripped the expensive coat from him, too.

  
“You shouldn’t come to a place like that dressed as fine as this,” one of them told him in his ear. Credence smelled the alcohol on his breath.

  
“‘Tracts the wrong sort of attention.” The other agreed, swiftly kicking Credence’s feet from under him. He fell to his knees and was kneed in the stomach. He gagged and went to the ground, curling in on himself with his bad elbow cradled close to him. The man who’d kneed him whooped in delight as the other laughed. _Just go,_ he thought. _If they go, I can just go home._

  
“You think he’s gonna remember us? He’s seen our faces pretty good I mean.” One asked the other. Another kick came and Credence yelped as his finger exploded in pain. How far was this going to go? Would they kill him? He felt panic turn the blood acrid in his veins, underlined by something deeper. Something older and calmer and much worse.

  
He remembered the next kick, and then the sound came, the sound of a freight train approaching in a tunnel, the sound a tornado makes right before every window in the building shatters.

  
_***_

He woke with teeth chattering and fingers numb. He was slumped against the stone wall of the alley. There was paper money strewn about like confetti - like his ruined flyers in another alley in another city- a lifetime ago. His coat was by his feet. He leaned forward, wincing in pain. He managed to grab it and drag it towards him, too stiff and weak to put it on properly. His finger was bent at a strange angle and he could tell a few ribs were bruised if not broken. What concerned him the most was the disorientation he remembered from Before. That feeling meant he had lost control.

  
Shivering, he looked further down the alley. Ten feet away a man lay motionless, facedown. Five feet from him was another. The second man's leg was bent at ninety degrees the wrong way. It had begun to snow. A pristine dusting already covered their backs.

Credence felt fear reverberate through him, part of his pulse. He knocked his head back against the rough stone of the wall, once, then again - cursed under his breath. So much for controlling it. Why couldn’t they have just taken the money and the stupid coat and left him alone? Why did they have to provoke it?

  
Credence wondered if he could get home from here before daylight. He thought he could do it. His legs were alright. But he couldn’t leave the bodies here. Not with how unnatural he knew they looked, how their skin would be. This was a town, not a city like New York. People would be superstitious, quick to gossip and fear mongering.

He put a hand to the mark on his skin and thought very, very hard about where he was and the urgency of what he’d done.

***

  
Mere moments later, a sudden noise and genesis of movement in his periphery made Credence jump. Grindelwald stood in the mouth of the alley in his black overcoat, gloved hands at his sides as he took in the scene. His gaze went first to Credence huddled against the wall, then to the motionless figures beyond him.

  
Immediately, Grindelwald strode past Credence to examine the casualties, nudging one of the unfortunate brutes with the tip of his boot. When he rolled him over the man's arms thumped lifelessly to the ground. Grindelwald turned to Credence with an eyebrow raised.

  
“Sir,” Credence nearly sobbed, his voice strained. “I can explain.”

  
“And you will.” Grindelwald told him before making a sweeping motion with one hand that slid both corpses against the wall unceremoniously. He moved a trash barrel the same way in between the bodies and the street, blocking them from immediate view. It would buy them a few hours in the dead of night in a place like this, Credence realized. 

  
Grindelwald went to Credence, kneeling down beside him and grabbing him by the shoulders. In a horrible lurching moment that made Credence’s ribs scream in protest, they were back in their apartment. Credence fell to his knees, cold and hurt. Grindelwald made a fire in the hearth and turned on oil lamps before coming back to Credence and dragging him to standing by his armpits.

  
“Come.” He said, helping the boy into the armchair near the now-roaring fireplace.

  
“Please,” Credence managed, knowing he was probably in for it like he’d never been in his short and miserable life. “I’m sorry. I-”

  
“Show me where you’re hurt.” Grindelwald cut him off bluntly, squatting down to rest on his heels in front of him. Credence choked back sobs, not caring about where he was hurt, but rather what kind of trouble he was in. He held out the hand with the broken finger, and Grindelwald took it in his hands gently as one might pick up a wounded swallow. Credence closed his eyes, queasy at the way his finger listed the wrong way.

  
“Try to bend it.” Grindelwald instructed after a moment, and Credence flexed his hand with ease. He opened his eyes to see it was straight again.

  
“Where else?”

  
Credence lifted his shirt. He hadn’t seen himself yet, but when he looked down he wasn’t surprised to see the apple-sized black bruises that covered his torso. Grindelwald went as far as to take out his wand for these. Credence felt the smooth tip just graze his skin. He flinched as it moved from one to another, and the soreness faded.  
“Is that it?” Grindelwald asked again, voice without sympathy or anger or anything that would give Credence a clue as to what was in store for him.

  
“My elbow,” Credence mumbled apologetically. “I slipped on the ice and landed on it.”

  
“Can you extend it?”

  
He did, with some difficulty. Grindelwald took the fractured joint in his hands and held it gently. A strange sensation replaced the pain but in a moment that was gone, too, and it was as if he’d never fallen. Credence sniffed, wanting to thank him but afraid to speak.

  
“Come.” Grindelwald said, and Credence followed him to the kitchen, dread making him drag his feet. He gestured to a chair at the small table and Credence sat, folding his hands in his lap and bowing his head. He glanced up through his lashes to see Grindelwald making him tea, a local blend of leaves and herbs that smelled to Credence like woodsmoke and the edge of the forest in winter. He stared at the cup set in front of him.

  
Grindelwald sat opposite him. “Now you will do your explaining.” He said calmly.

   
Credence took a breath, wrapped his hands around the sides of the mug. He tried to siphon strength from the warmth, and the tingly whole-ness of his ribs and finger where before had been dizzying pain.

  
“Earlier tonight I was restless, Sir.” He didn’t look up from the hypnotic steam curling from his cup. “I… I went for a walk but it’s so cold so… I went into a tavern to warm up. But I left because these men were… they were watching me.”

He chanced a glance up and was met only with an impartial gaze as Grindelwald reclined easily, one leg extended out in a relaxed sprawl. Snow was melting from his boots onto the floor.

  
“They followed me out and chased me. I thought they were just going to take the money, and the coat, but they started..." His voice wavered. "They started hitting and kicking me and… and I was afraid and I didn’t have time to control it, I couldn’t breathe right or focus my magic and… it killed them.  _I_ killed them. I didn’t go anywhere else though... I never left the alley. I swear. ”

  
The silence that followed his words seemed to ring. Credence glanced up again, ready for whatever was going to happen to just happen already.

 

Grindelwald reflected on this tale as he sat forward, clasped his hands on the tabletop and sighed.

  
“This incident has made one thing clear.” He said said after an uncomfortable moment.

  
“What, Sir?” Credence whispered.

  
“If you can’t control an outburst in a street skirmish, I haven’t taught you control under any real pressure. And that’s when control is paramount.”

  
Credence blinked. “Oh.”

  
“And we’ve learned also, that the mark I gave you works better than the charm ever did. I could see you so clearly. I could hear your mind as you called me. That’s a good thing.”

  
Credence agreed wholeheartedly with that, but he was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  
“Am I in trouble?” He finally blurted, unable to stand the suspense any longer.

  
Grindelwald looked at Credence as if he’d only just materialized in his chair. “For what, child?”

  
“For… going out at night alone and causing all this? For what I _did_?"

  
Grindelwald actually laughed at him. “You can go out any time you please. You know that. But clearly I need to teach you some conventional magic other than how to heat the tea kettle.”

  
Credence’s face burned at that. He should have been able to defend himself without resorting to double homicide. Not that he’d _meant_ to.

  
“Those men are nothing to us, Credence. Common thieves. I’ll get rid of them later just to be prudent, for your sake. Don’t waste a thought on them. They hurt you.”

  
Credence thought there might be some scrap of dignity to be salvaged from what he’d done.

  
“I should do it. I mean, help.” He looked at Grindelwald. “With the bodies.” Grindelwald reached out and covered Credence’s hand where it lay on the table with his own- something he did not usually do. “You certainly don’t have to. You can, but it might only trouble you, pet.”

  
Credence’s heart stuttered at that. _Pet._ As if nothing had happened. Maybe Grindelwald was right. Maybe they had deserved what they’d gotten, even. Maybe he’d inadvertently done the world a favor with those two.

  
“You should’ve left one alive,” Grindelwald told him, rubbing Credence’s palm with his thumb. “One to tell the tale. No one would believe him.” His eyes narrowed and his smile was wry. “Probably go mad. It doesn’t seem to take much with their kind.”

  
_No-majes_ , Credence realized. He tried to hide his distaste at Grindelwald’s humor, but as usual he was too observant.

  
“Oh, hush, liebchen.” Grindelwald admonished him gently. “Even after how you’ve been treated you still have that soft, squeamish heart, don’t you?” Credence felt Grindelwald’s thumb pressing into his palm, massaging absently over old scar tissue. He imagined it was worming into that _soft_ heart of his, all pulp and guilt.

  
“I thought you’d punish me.” He admitted. “I thought you’d be angry.”

  
“Mmm.” Grindelwald turned Credence’s palm up, traced a few lines with his finger, which Credence found ticklish but not unpleasant. “Sometimes I don’t know if it’s really me you misjudge or if you’re just conditioned from your unfortunate upbringing.” Grindelwald replied.

  
“Do you have to leave again?” Credence asked.

  
“Not tonight. I’ve seen what you get up to when you get bored.”

  
Credence thought he probably deserved that joke.

  
“But I do need to dispose of those bodies sooner rather than later. It won’t take long.” He looked sincerely at Credence. “Do you truly want to come? Or you want to sit by the fire and warm up some more?” Credence searched his pale eyes for judgement or mockery, but found none. Still, he was responsible. He should at least help to clean up his own mess, shouldn’t he? But Grindelwald’s voice was persuasive. “Let me do this.” He said gently.

  
Credence nodded his surrender and let himself be led back to his favorite chair. Grindelwald set Credence’s tea beside him and pulled a blanket from the back of the chair, wrapping him snugly.

  
“Don’t move.” he said firmly, as if Credence had other plans. “Here,” he pressed Credences latest aquisition into the boy’s hands, a book Credence had surreptitiously skimmed off a pile soon to be burned in the town center as they were wont do to on occasion. “Occupy your mind, if you can.” Grindelwald instructed, and left him alone again.

Credence read until he returned. Though his hands shook, he made himself keep reading, told himself it had been an order.

Only when Grindelwald returned did Credence set the book down and go to him. He walked into his chest, trying to borrow some of Grindelwald's steadiness to keep himself from shaking. Grindelwald held and shushed him. "Go to bed, sweet thing. I'll come in a moment and make you feel better." Credence nodded against Grindelwald's shoulder, but didn't let go. 

"Had quite a fright, didn't you?" Grindelwald cooed at him, and Credence nearly cried at how indulgent he was being with him. "You're safe now, though. Get in bed."

Credence untangled himself and went into the bedroom, stripping his outer clothes as he climbed into the bed, casting them onto the floor carelessly. 

When Grindelwald joined him a minute later he held an arm out for Credence, who went shamelessly to him. Credence closed his eyes as he was held and petted. If Grindelwald began to touch him, he thought, he would respond enthusiastically and immediately. 

"It's best you did what you did." Grindelwald purred into his ear. "If you hadn't killed them, I would've. And I wouldn't have been as kind or quick about it, either." 

Credence whimpered appreciatively. Grindelwald was rarely posessive toward him but when he was it made him feel _good._  He didn't feel ashamed or afraid. He only felt his own pride and ego, stoked like a flame in kindling.    


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please heed the tags/warnings

It had been a full week since the incident in town. Grindelwald had insinuated he planned to teach Credence better control under more stressful circumstances. He'd ignored it since - distracted by other matters.

“Sir? How will you teach me to control it better? When... when it counts?” Credence ventured. It was late. The time of night when he should be sleeping but couldn't quiet his mind. It seemed to him a Herculean task - taming a wasp's nest. 

Grindelwald looked up. The question had been without preamble, and had broken a long silence.

“Experience.” He replied simply, looking back to the stack of mismatched papers that he’d been pouring over for half an hour.

Credence wondered what, exactly, that meant for him. “Experience, like...out there?” He pressed.

Grindelwald sighed and set them down. He pushed his chair back from the desk. Inwardly Credence cringed, afraid he’d been pushy or irritating. Grindelwald only tapped his thigh a few times. Credence crossed the floor to him. He settled over Grindelwald’s lap sideways, biting his lower lip.

“Nothing so drastic as that. Although that would probably work just as well.” Grindelwald pondered, gathering Credence closer in his lap and wrapping his arms around the boy’s slender waist. Credence was only taller than Grindelwald when they sat like this. He always felt gangly and awkward at first, until Grindelwald’s touches put him at ease.

“I was thinking something safer. Nothing that might put you in harm’s way.”

Credence warmed at that, though the caveat was left unsaid. _Not yet._  

“You need to be uncomfortable, and become comfortable with it. If you were… a simpler case I would just put you under physical stress.” Almost to himself he added, “A Cruciatus, perhaps, if tamer methods failed.”

Credence looked at Grindelwald in wounded surprise.

Grindelwald raised his eyebrows at him. “Oh, you know about all that, do you?”

Credence looked fixedly at his lap, feeling betrayed just by the hypothetical suggestion. “I suppose with all that reading you would, wouldn’t you?”

Credence stiffened, hating the amusement he heard in Grindelwald’s voice.

Grindelwald squeezed his waist. “Credence.” Credence would only look at the corner of his mouth, his shirt-collar, anywhere but his eyes. “I said if you were anyone else, I would try a physical stressor. It’s not a physically triggered response for you, and physical stress alone won’t draw it out.”

“You said if I were a simpler case.” Credence whispered.

“But you aren’t. We heard not a peep from your dormant friend when you let me carve your leg like a Yule ham. Credence, I didn’t even have to tie you down.”

Credence tried to hide his smile at that. If his pride were a tree, here were it’s twisting, strange roots.

“I think you’d just let me do it. And I don’t think that would be useful to us at all.” Grindelwald told him. “Am I not right?”

Credence shrugged sulkily. “I dont know. Try me."

Grindelwald only laughed at him. “I think you’d be singing a different tune if you knew what you were flirting with.”

"One way to find out." He mumbled despite his better judgement, earning himself a slap to his outer thigh so fast he yelped in surprise. It stung even through his clothes.

“Enough.” Grindelwald said levelly. “It won’t achieve our ends. You have nothing to prove to me or yourself that way. We're not doing it.”

Credence caved at that, surprised at himself for ever being so petulant. He didn’t want it anyway, not truly. It was frightening and unfathomed territory to him. “Yes, Sir. Sorry.”

“Brat.” Grindelwald accused rather gently.

Credence leaned down to lay his head on Grindelwald’s shoulder. “I’m just mixed up.”

“If you are you’ve done it to yourself.” Grindelwald tapped Credence’s thigh where it still stung from the slap. “Up.”

Credence lifted his head and slid reluctantly from Grindelwald’s lap. He motioned down the hall. Credence went to the bedroom feeling only a little nervous and Grindelwald followed. He shut the door quietly behind them.

“Let’s get you un-mixed-up.”

Credence’s mouth went dry. Grindelwald hadn’t changed his mind, had he?

Grindelwald motioned to the bed and Credence was barely on it before he was pushed down and flipped onto his back. Grindelwald dragged his hips to the edge of the bed, undid his trousers and hooked his fingers into the band of Credence’s underwear to pull them both from his slim hips at once. Credence lifted onto his elbows, watching between his legs as Grindelwald undid his own trousers and took his already hard cock into his hand, stroking himself a few times as he did. Credence’s heart began to pound at how quickly this was going. Usually Grindelwald paid attention to him first, if he fucked him at all. This was all backwards. He looked up to Grindelwald’s face for a cue, for guidance.

“You have enough sense to try and relax, don’t you?” Was all he said before reaching between the boy’s legs, a chilly slickness transferring from two of his fingers to Credence. As grateful as Credence was grateful for that slippery substance, he had not been comforted by the cold, utilitarian touch.

Grindelwald tugged Credence’s hips even closer to him and aligned himself with the boy’s entrance, guiding himself with a hand on his length. Credence cried out at the suddenness of it, the burning stretch that felt so inherently _obscene_ it made his face hot and his cock twitch despite his intense discomfort.

Grindelwald hooked his thumbs under the soft skin of Credence’s bent knees and pushed in to the hilt. He wasted no time with rough, quick thrusts. As he was bounced lewdly on the thick cock buried inside him, Credence thought how impossibly full he felt, how grounding and damning this forbidden act was and how did he forget every time how _badbadgood_ it felt to be fucked like this?

Credence’s yelps weakened to moans as Grindelwald got rougher, leaning in close over him. Credence wrapped his long legs around him in response, tucking one ankle around the other. Grindelwald let a hand slip into the dark hair at the back of his skull, pulling till his head tilted back and he moaned pitifully.

“I know a little slut who can come without even being touched.” Grindelwald growled into his ear. “Don’t even think about it, because I’m just getting started with you.”

Credence tried to nod but couldn’t move his head in that tight grip. “No Sir,” He managed instead, delightfully pinned. He knew when Grindelwald was close by the way he tensed and bit Credence’s neck cruelly. Credence only wrapped his legs tighter as he spilled inside him, pulled out after only a moment of stillness filled only by the sounds of their breathing.

He stayed on his back - staring at the shadowy ceiling. He felt the sticky, ticklish evidence of what had been done to him between his legs. No sooner had he squirmed uncomfortably he was handed a towel. Grindelwald took a step away from the bed and re-did his trousers, fastened a loosed button on his waistcoat and tugged at the wrists of his sleeves to straighten the wrinkles while Credence tried to clean up with as much grace as he could. 

Grindelwald sat on the bed against the pillows. “Over my lap.”

Credence sat up to obey, still naked from the waist down. He tried to find a comfortable way to lay across his legs how he wanted. 

“Good. Do you know what’s next?” Grindelwald was still so composed, as if he’d just finished reading the paper and not fucking Credence silly.

“I think so, Sir.” Credence answered.

“Do you know why?”

“For…” Credence felt a sudden crippling embarrassment at being punished like a child by the likes of Grindelwald. “For being insolent and foolish before?”

“Good guess.” Grindelwald replied dryly. “But no.”

Credence lifted to an elbow and turned questioningly.

“Just for fun.” Grindelwald grinned and pushed Credence back down by the shoulderblades. “And you’re going to count out loud for me. Ready?”

“Yes,” Credence whispered, closing his eyes.

The first slap to his bare, exposed behind was woefully informative. Credence whimpered mournfully at the force behind it. It was just a bare hand, he reminded himself, but _oh God,_ it felt like a strap. The sound of it rang out indecently, and the pain seemed to flow from the source over his body like a ripple in a pond.

“One,” He said dutifully, making fists in the blanket so he had something to hold onto. Another blow. It didn’t seem so hard as the first, or maybe it had been the shock of the first one that made this one feel bearable. He counted it out.

“Two.”

By nine, he knew Grindelwald could hear the tears he was trying to hide in his voice. Grindelwald took Credence’s wrists, brought them behind him to the small of his back, held them both firmly there with one hand. Credence felt even more helpless this way. It seemed to make the pain of the blows harder to compartmentalize.

More slaps over his ass, the tender backs of his thighs. Two in quick succession to the same spot threw him off, the unpredictable space before the next one made worse. Everywhere was hot and burning and he called each one out miserably, knowing he sounded wretched and pathetic as he flinched and whimpered. He could only imagine how he looked, tear-stains on his face and the blanket, arms pinned behind him, legs trembling.

Credence called out twenty-one in a harsh sob, not knowing if he was counting to thirty or fifty. _He’s going to hit me until I beg him to stop,_ he thought. _Until it welts and bruises._

“Good boy.” Credence stilled for the next one, but it didn’t come. He felt Grindelwald’s hand caress the spot where his thigh met the curve of his ass, painful and hot to the touch. Credence tensed when Grindelwald’s hand retracted, waiting for the next hateful blow.

“It’s alright. No more.” Grindelwald soothed. “You did well. No surprise there.”

“Twenty-one?” Credence asked, confused.

“Mhm. I like you guessing.” Grindelwald answered.

Credence wondered if he really just liked to keep him in the dark or if he’d heard the mounting desperation in his cries and taken pity. Maybe it had been both. He’d learned that when it came to Grindelwald, many things were not mutually exclusive.

Credence felt his wrists released and they fell back to his sides. His shoulders ached in relief. Grindelwald laid a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbed gentle circles over his shirt.

“Deep breath.” He instructed, waiting for Credence to take a shaky, deep inhale. His body seemed to relax on the exhale, the tension in his spine beginning to slowly unravel.

“You done wanting to feel bad? Want to feel good?” 

Credence felt desire thrum through his belly immediately at the promise behind those words. Grindelwald always looked after him in that regard. Grindelwald patted the bed directly beside him so Credence moved to lay there, head in the crook of his shoulder. He was already half-hard, anticipation making him squirm.

“What is it?” Grindelwald prompted, looking maddeningly indifferent to his plight. Credence pushed his hips suggestively, asking.

“Is that so?” Grindelwald watched him with subdued interest but made no move to touch him.

“Show me.” He spurred gently, and Credence pushed himself against Grindelwald’s pant leg. The friction felt good. So good that he did it again, shame blunted by how blissful the contact felt.

He wanted Grindelwald to touch him, to kiss his neck and tease and pull his nipples like he sometimes did, making Credence whine and writhe, but Grindelwald had only partially unclothed him before- he still wore his shirt.

All he could do was rut his drooling, bobbing cock against Grindelwald’s unyielding thigh, knowing he was being watched intently even when he closed his eyes.

“There’s a good boy.” Grindelwald sounded almost tender, sending a shudder of need through Credence. “There you go. Come on, baby.”

Encouraged, Credence rocked his hips faster, one hand reaching up Grindelwald’s chest to grasp the fabric of his shirt as if to ground himself.

“You’re gonna come just from this aren’t you? I’m not even touching you. Needy little thing.”

Credence whined uncertainly, panting and listening intently to Grindelwald’s every word.

“It’s alright.” Grindelwald reassured him. “I want to watch you make yourself come. I know you can. Such a good little slut I have.”

Credence moaned at that, hips stuttering as he came over himself and Grindelwald’s fine clothes, pressing his forehead to Grindelwald’s shoulder as his he bucked and shuddered.

Once the waves of pleasure had passed, he felt filthy and foolish, every bit the slut Grindelwald had suggested him to be.

But Grindelwald pulled him close, finally touching him, and kissed him in such a way that he felt a little better. “That was a sight, Credence, truly.”

Credence’s shoulders lost some of the tension that had come creeping back in. “Really?” He fished timidly.

Grindelwald ran a finger over Credence’s lower lip. “You have no idea.”

Credence lowered his eyes and smiled shyly at the praise. “Thank you.”

“Are you still feeling quite as mixed-up?”

 “No.”

“No.” Grindelwald agreed. “You don’t look it. Let me see.”

Blushing anew, he let his spanked-red skin be inspected.

“Look at you.” Grindelwald murmured, running a hand over the backs of his thighs, his backside.The touch burned. 

“I don’t think I’ll heal it. I think I'll let you to sleep like that.”

 “Yes, Sir.” He agreed softly.

Grindelwald regarded him more closely for a moment, caught his chin in his fingers to better peer in his eyes. “A few little love taps and you’ve turned back to a church-mouse, hmm?”

Credence didn't answer but for a little shrug, which Grindelwald let slide, brought Credence back to lay against his chest. He settled in gratefully, hoping it would last. Hoping he’d be allowed to fall asleep like this tonight, feeling exhausted and sore in all the right places and foolishly, recklessly safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not headed anywhere in particular with this but i cant seem to stop either so


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lets move this party to the castle mansion base thing why not  
> relatively tame chapter

It was full dark. Some hour where nothing stirred in the cold wind, where every lantern and electric light was snuffed. Grindelwald had bade Cedence come with him, and Credence had stood with him so they could disapparate. He was always disoriented by that lurching and strange travel. Had they gone ten miles? A thousand? They were far from the city, that much he knew.

  
Credence could smell the difference in clime on the air - clean and empty and glacial. He remembered telling Grindelwald he smelled of the woods once when he had just apparated back to their rooms, but now Credence knew it was this mountain air that had clung cold to the wool of his coat.

  
Credence halted his crunching footsteps in blue-white snow to stare up at the stars, a little smile on his lips at how much there was to see. He could see not just familiar constellations but the uncounted multitudes among them, never visible in the New York sky. He let his eyes rove over clusters and confetti-bursts of stars in that liquid black, transfixed. One point of light streaked boldly across the zenith, burning up in it’s own wake in an arc that disappeared like the tail of a firework. He didn’t know he had gasped in a private sort of wonder until he felt a gloved hand on the small of his back, felt a presence beside him.

  
“I have a room, Credence, with a ceiling of clear glass.” Grindelwald said quietly, next to his right ear. “Where you can stargaze without your lips turning blue.”

  
Reluctantly, Credence dropped his eyes from the heavens. It _was_ cold. Viciously cold, he realized. Their altitude thinned the air and made the wind wild. Although they had only apparated a minute before he felt the cold creeping through the leather toes of his boots, through his gloves, making his face so stiff it was hard to speak. He nodded at Grindelwald, who led him out of the night and into an impossibly huge structure whose turrets and spires were only visible as even blacker shapes against the night they pierced.

  
If Credence had been awed by the sky, he was taken aback by the scale of the rooms he found himself being led through. It seemed like he would just understand the scope of one hall or room and they entered another. He’d never seen ceilings so high, not in a church or anywhere else. Their shoes on the cold marble floor sent clicking noises bounding from the walls, the strange acoustics making Credence feel small and uneasy in the belly of this strange new place.

  
Grindelwald opened the double doors to a room with scatter rugs and a hearth large enough to roast an elk. Flames danced to life from dark coals and made the room friendlier. The furniture looked more welcoming in the soft light, less like crouching beasts and hunched silhouettes.

  
“This is yours?” Credence asked quietly. Grindelwald had mentioned a place, more than once, where they would go when they no longer needed to keep moving. He’d never imagined this.

  
“It is. Is it suitable?”

  
Credence heard the little teasing note in Grindelwald’s voice. He glanced back at him leaning in the doorway still, regarding him with a familiar amusement in his eyes.

  
“Will I stay here?” Credence asked, letting his fingers glide along the polished mahogany spine of a chaise lounge in front of the crackling fire.

  
“I’d like you to.”

  
Credence glanced again at Grindelwald briefly. “Where will you be?” He asked in his best off-handed voice.

  
“Here. Most of the time.” Grindelwald reassured him.

 

Credence knew he’d probably seen right through his feigned aloofness. He chewed his lip. “Can I see the star-room?”

  
Grindelwald smiled at him, held out a hand.

  
They climbed stairs that wound in a spiral, and Grindelwald opened a tall, thin door. True to his word, a circular observatory with a domed ceiling greeted them on the other side. It was sparse but for a few stacked books and a couple of chairs. The moon had finally risen over a peak of mountain that had shrouded it before. Pale light reflected on the polished floor like the surface of a black lake. Credence stepped in cautiously, as though it were truly water and he might fall in. He looked up again. The stars were just as magnificent from this vantage point, and the glass was so clear and free of wooden or metal supports that it appeared not to be there at all.

  
“Is there really glass?” Credence asked. He supposed if there wasn’t he would have seen his breath on the air when he spoke.

  
Grindelwald shrugged. “Of a sort.”

  
He let Credence wander around for a few minutes, leafing through the books and gingerly touching a thing he recognized as a telescope, unsure of any of the knobs or dials.

  
“It’s late, Credence.” Grindelwald said finally. “Plenty of time for wandering in the morning.”

  
Credence hurried back to the door, leaving the sleek telescope pointed like a blind eye at the heavens. “Sorry.”

 

The bedroom Credence was led to had its own fireplace, and a bed taller and larger than any in their previous arrangements as they’d traveled.

  
“You have a room as well.” Grindelwald told him. “Your pick of any, actually, it doesn’t matter.”

  
“Is this your room?” Credence asked, already knowing.

  
Grindelwald nodded. “And it’s where I’d prefer you sleep.”

  
Credence felt his face get hot. It was absurd, he thought, after having shared a bed so many times and after the things they’d done, the things Credence had allowed to be done to him… yet here he was, with heat creeping up his cheeks. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

  
“Yes, Sir.” He agreed with eyes downcast, an oft-repeated affirmative which felt like letting go of the reigns, like free-falling. It felt better, Credence thought, to fall than to hang on to his own tenuous control indefinitely, clinging blindly to a sheer rock face when there might be something softer below after all.

  
“I thought so.” Grindelwald said, placing his hands on each side of Credence’s jaw and tilting his face up so he could no longer hide his blush.

  
“Some days there will be others here. Maybe one, maybe a dozen. There’s plenty of rooms here for you to be alone if you’d prefer. I know how you are about company.”

  
Credence winced, grateful but wanting Grindelwald to be proud of him. He’d talked with Miss Rosier, he wasn’t _that_ hopeless a case. If he retained anything from his bleak days at the church, it had been impeccable manners. The thought of strangers coming and going, bound to a cause that was still hazy to Credence made him nervous. The wheels were set in motion, and there was something expected of him. 

  
Would Grindelwald treat him the same when others were nearby, he wondered? Would he still lay a hand on the back of his neck posessively, call him _pet_? He swallowed reflexively at that thought, both dreading the embarrassment he might feel at people watching him treated so and feeling strangely drawn to it.

  
“Or you can sit at my side.” Grindelwald murmured confidentially, thumbs stroking along Credence’s throat. “And let everyone see what a good boy you are. Nothing like they’ve read in those libelous papers.”

  
Credence’s legs felt nearly boneless suddenly. His traitorous heart skipped and thudded and made his breath shallow.

  
“Don’t try to decide. You’ll know soon enough.” Grindelwald let a hand drop from Credence’s jaw to wrap around his lower back, pull him in close. Credence let his head drop to Grindelwald’s shoulder, the familiar and undemanding gesture of tenderness like a gulp of air after too long under water.

  
Credence closed his eyes, felt the boneless sensation creep up into his arms and relax his shoulders down, make is head feel heavy where it lay. He was aware of only Grindelwald’s hands and where the were on his body. The anchoring pressure on the small of Credence’s back remained while his other hand went to the back of his neck. The feel of Grindelwald’s hand on his bare skin made Credence sigh. It sounded needier than he’d meant for it to.

  
“I’m going to bring your things, from the flat.” Grindelwald told him. “There’s similar things here, but you might miss your phonograph… your books.”

  
Credence nodded even as Grindelwald’s hand moved between them to touch Credence over his clothes. He was talking about such trivial things, moving books and records, and touching him at the same time in that most sensitive and sinful place, and Credence’s breath stuttered as he tried to reconcile the two.

  
“Thank you,” He managed, temple still pressed to Grindelwald’s shoulder. He felt that he had begun to shake a little, wished he was lying down so he wouldn’t have to count on his legs for support. The hand between them groped him more deliberately, and he felt himself getting hard under such insistent petting.

  
“Sir,” He breathed, pressing his forehead hard onto Grindelwald’s shoulder as if to ground himself.

  
“What is it, liebchen?”

  
Credence whined, pushing his hips into Grindelwald’s hand.

  
“Up.” Grindelwald motioned toward the expansive bed. Credence obeyed, crawling over the covers toward the headboard. He got almost there and Grindelwald grabbed his ankle, yanked him back half a foot so his knee slid back and he fell onto his stomach. Before he could turn his head Grindelwald was above him, flipping him over onto his back and leaning into him with his weight. Credence moaned as he felt pressure on his groin, and it didn’t escape Grindelwald’s notice. He pinned Credence’s wrists above his head easily with one hand and resumed petting him over his clothes with the other.

  
“What do you want, child?” He crooned, kissing Credence’s mouth.

  
Credence tried to return the kiss but he pulled away.

  
“Tell me.”

  
“I want what you want.” He answered, squirming as Grindelwald gave his cock a squeeze over his clothes.

  
“What I want?” He clucked his tongue. “You can do better than that.”

  
Credence whimpered, distracted by how achingly good but not-enough the persistent touches were. What did he want? What did he ever want when he was like this but to please? Other than that it was simple.

  
“I wanna come, Sir. Please.”

  
“That’s it? What a humble request.”

  
The touches stopped and Credence felt the buttons of his pants undone with dexterous fingers. Grindelwald slipped his hand down the front of his trousers. The sensation of his naked skin being touched after being teased through his clothes made him jump and then moan. It was a sweet heat, the slow and steady grip still trapped close to his body in the confines of his loosened clothes.

He’d touched himself like this countless times when he could no longer resist the bottled and straining urge for release, hand down the front of his pajamas trying not to make his rusty cot squeak with his guilty and hurried hand. Now he was well aware his own hands were pinned over his head and the touches were not his own, the hand on his cock was not secret or hurried but languid and sure. Credence opened his eyes to find Grindelwald watching him lazily, a cat with a mouse.

  
“Easy.” He gentled, and went a little faster, the hindrance of Credence’s trousers seeming to bother him not at all. Credence had almost wished at first he’d taken them off, but there was something about this, about being made to feel so good with his clothes on, the heat, the strange angle... His breathing grew shallow. He felt sweat on the insides of his thighs and in little pinpricks stinging his underarms. He felt pleasure building, a pressure that seemed almost a torment, erasing any thought from his mind but the feel of Grindelwald’s hand. His toes dug into the blankets, his thighs flexed and muscles contracted seemingly against his will as the feeling built and built in his belly, his cock approaching sensitive in the unrelenting grip.

  
“I’m - _ah-”_

  
“I know. That’s it.”

  
Credence took that as permission. Grindelwald’s knowing voice in his ear was all he could take, he came helplessly and messily over himself and his clothes with a little cry, hips lifting from the bed. Grindelwald didn’t let off entirely, stroking the last weak dribble of come from his sensitive cock. Too weak to pull away, Credence whimpered and dropped his hips back down to the bed. Grindelwald removed his hand.

 

Embarrassment moved in to fill the void his desire had left, as it still often did. He sometimes heard the noises he’d been making played back to him in his head after all was silent. The whines and cries of pleasure he’d just been making threatened to curdle his afterglow. Grindelwald liked the noises he made, tried to elicit them on purpose, he knew that. That only diminished his embarrassment slightly.

  
Credence felt the weight of his weariness now, his sated limbs heavy. He felt his soiled clothes removed so he was naked from the waist down. Grindelwald turned him over, rested his weight back over him. Credence moaned, knowing what was coming. He pushed his hips up and backward. He heard the sound of a belt being undone, the rustle of fabric being loosed and shoved down. He was tugged up roughly by the hips a little further and felt an unmistakable pressure at his entrance, felt hands kneading the flesh of his cheeks hungrily. He made a pouting noise, cheek pressed to the soft blanket. He hadn’t gotten those opening, coaxing fingers first, or the slippery substance he was aways afforded.

  
“Shh. Spoiled thing.” Grindelwald admonished. "There's slick, it's just on me this time, you're alright."

  
Credence pushed his hips back by way of apology.

  
Grindelwald pushed into him, and though it stretched and burned worse than usual, Credence only balled his fists in the covers. _Spoiled thing._

  
“You’re alright.” Grindelwald told him again, slow and easy until he was to the hilt inside Credence, and then he moved exactly how he wanted.

Credence squeezed his eyes shut against the sensation, mostly pain but with little starbursts of pleasure inside of him, sensitive from his orgasm. He let himself chase this pleasure, making little noises each time, vulnerable with his face in the blankets and his rear end pressed up. He yelped at a sharp slap to the side of his buttocks.

  
“Good boy,” Grindelwald told him, and he knew the slap had not been corrective. Another slap matched the first on his left side, stinging. He thought if he had not just come, it would not be difficult to climax just from this, from those little reverberations of pleasure, from the compliant act of letting himself be fucked alone.

  
His legs began to cramp and ache and the pain began to override the pleasure again when Grindelwald held his hips fast as he finished deep inside him. He pulled out unceremoniously and Credence let himself fall forward to the bed.

  
After a moment he realized he was waiting, still and patient, for either a muttered spell or a hot, wet cloth to clean him. _Spoiled thing_. Grindelwald had just been teasing him, he told himself. Still it had swung a stick at his many insecurities, his fear of displeasing. He propped himself up on an elbow to look for something to clean himself but then Grindelwald was beside him again with a warm hand towel. He almost protested, but the touches were gentle and platonic, an odd intimacy. He let them happen.

  
“Get in bed.” Grindelwald told him. He climbed under the heavy covers into soft sheets.

  
Grindelwald followed him, lighting a fire in the hearth and turning out all other sources of light.

  
“The fire will help you sleep.” Grindelwald told Credence, gathering him close and banishing all fears and anxieties he’d previously felt.

  
He traced the shape of Credence’s face with a finger, forehead to cheekbone to chin, around and around slowly. Lulled, Credence struggled to keep his eyes open to watch the crackling fire. He soon lost the fight, thinking of the setting moon and the stars more inumerable than grains of sand. He thought not at all of his place in this vast and cold new world, so familiar now were the arms in which he lay.


	10. Chapter 10

Credence was sore. His neck was tender even when he turned his head, like he’d been fixed with a noose.

The muscles and joints of his arms still ached dully from how the restraints had held him. He could still feel where he’d been roughly fucked, felt fingerprint bruises like raindrops already rising to the skin on his hips and thighs.

  
Grindelwald had come home particularly pleased about something, with a simmering sort of energy Credence had learned to pay careful attention to. He’d been crueler than usual with him, biting and sucking purple bruises into his skin and kneading the flesh at his hips until Credence cried out, his his face in his shoulder, both arms tied above him, wrists together.

He’d come, that was true. Three times until he was sobbing pitifully, shaking his head when he was touched again.

  
“I could make you come anyway, even soft.” He threatened. “Just a small spell. I could make you come as many times as I like.”

  
Credence kept shaking his head weakly. It _hurt_.

  
“Alright.” Grindelwald relented, apparently satisfied enough already. With a flick of his index the ties around Credence’s wrists disappeared, fabric evaporating like water. Credence hissed when he brought his arms back down into a natural position, shoulder joints on fire.

Grindelwald was tucking his shirt back in, fixing his disheveled waistcoat. Credence curled into himself at first, wanting to cry from exhaustion, feeling empty and sore and raw. Instead he slipped off the bed.

  
Grindelwald didn’t even look at him as he padded on bare feet to the master bath. In the mirror, Credence thought he looked wild. His lashes clumped into wet triangles, his eyes were red and hair messy. There were claiming marks on his neck and chest. He sniffed, swiped a hand at his running nose.

_Spoiled thing._

  
He sat naked, hugging his knees in the huge porcelain shell of a tub for a long while before turning the tap. When he did, both cold water and hot was painful on his skin and he settled for tepid. He climbed out before long, slipped a plain silk robe over his shoulders. A least his eyes were dry now, his lips no longer trembling.

  
Grindelwald wasn’t in the bedroom. Credence should be relieved, but it only made him feel lonely. Self-pity and indignation threatened to make the tears sting hot again but he swallowed, blinked them away. He climbed down the stairs to a room they both often frequented, the room with the big fireplace and the shelves that now housed Credence’s books.

  
Grindelwald was sitting near the crackling fire on a burgundy lounge, one that Credence often lay lengthwise on. He was looking through something, a book or some kind of file Credence couldn't tell, the leaves of uneven parchment on his lap loose and haphazard.

  
Grindelwald didn’t glance up at his presence. Credence paused in the doorway, wondering if he should have just crawled under the covers and slept all alone. He was about to turn away when Grindelwald patted the side of his knee in invitation. _Sit._

  
Credence bowed his head and went to Grindelwald’s side. He turned and lowered himself to the floor with legs folded so he was sitting with his shoulder pressed to Grindelwald’s knee. Despite himself, he felt his breathing slow and his heart rate ease. It was not long before he felt a familiar hand come absently into his hair. His eyes closed. Grindelwald’s hand slipped back over his skull and onto his neck. He winced when his fingers touched the sore marks.

  
“I think you look your best like that, but I know they hurt.” He said. “I’ll fix you up.”

  
Credence felt a hand settle on his right shoulder and moved to press his cheek against it.

  
Grindelwald hummed, pleased. “There you are.”

  
Credence startled at the knock at the door.

  
“It’s open.” Grindelwald called. Miss Roser opened it, letting in a man Credence had never seen before. Grindelwald and Miss Rosier exchanged a nod and she shut the door again.

  
Credence was suddenly very aware he was sitting supplicant at Grindelwald’s feet like a pet. His hand went back in Credence hair, carding through slowly and evenly as before. _Stay,_ it said.

  
He knew how he looked in nothing but a silk robe fallen open at the throat, hands on his knees, fresh and unmistakable marks all over his neck and the ridge of his collarbone. The man stopped in the middle of the carpet, still a good distance. His eyes dropped to Credence, then quickly moved up to address Grindelwald. Credence dropped his gaze resolutely to the floor, stiff and completely still.

  
His heart thudded in his ears and he didn’t hear most of their brief exchange. Words sounded like they were coming through a tunnel. Credence looked up just enough to watch the man’s feet as he turned to leave. He closed the door carefully, as if making too much noise would be a sign of disrespect.

  
“Good boy, Credence.” Grindelwald praised softly when he was gone.

  
Credence let out a shaky exhale.

  
“They won’t say anything. And no one else will ever touch you.”

  
That was a possibility Credence hadn’t even considered. It made his mouth taste acidic.

  
“Stop thinking so much. Just trust my discretion.”

Credence nodded against Grindelwald’s knee. He thought of how he’d decided to make good on his promise of teaching Credence magic, how he’d given him his own wand. He could make things happen, but often the results were wildly unexpected. Control was the issue. He felt like he was trying to thread a needle with a rope. More often than not he was close to tears by the end of it, which only made his clumsy attempts at spellwork clumsier and more violent.

  
Grindelwald was patient, didn’t seem to expect him to have any kind of epiphany all at once. When he felt Credence getting frustrated he stood behind him, settled his hands over Credence’s shaking ones. “Good.” He said into Credence’s ear, even though he’d just burnt a hole in the floor the size of a cannonball and the room looked as if it had been shelled. “That’s good. Again.”

  
With Grindelwald’s hand covering his he was able to produce more predictable results. When they moved together he felt he was truly wielding something. His chest swelled with pride when he could simply move an object in a desired trajectory. A gold paperweight rose at his bidding and did a figure-eight in the air before a perfect, gentle landing.

  
Grindelwald laughed quietly. “You didn’t even notice, did you?”

Credence turned his head. “Sir?”

  
“You didn’t cast that out loud.”

  
Credence thought back to the preceding moment. Had he not spoken? Had he only thought it?

  
Grindelwald repaired the blackened hole in the floor with a wave of his wand.

  
“You were helping.” Credence said modestly, looking at the good-as-new hardwood.

  
“No.” Grindelwald told him, pulling Credence’s back against his chest and wrapping his arms loosely over his chest. “That was you.”

  
_Just trust my discretion._

  
Credence thought he could do that. True to his word, he felt Grindelwald move his hand over his neck, hovering, and the soreness faded to nothing as if it had never been.

**Author's Note:**

> [ come say hi on tumblr! ](http://bastardgirls.tumblr.com/)


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